I'm a Slave to the Wires
by theshipsfirstmate
Summary: AU - Felicity is an entertainment reporter who just decided she's quitting her job. Oliver is the star of a major network TV show who owes her a 15-minute phone interview.
1. Chapter 1

_AU - Felicity is an entertainment reporter who just decided she's quitting her job. Oliver is the star of a major network TV show who owes her a 15-minute phone interview. _

_A/N: Never planned on trying an AU, but this weird little fluffy kind-of-meta thing just kind of came out. Let me know if you like!_

"I'm gonna step out for a sec," Tommy tells him. "You good for this last one? I gotta meet Laurel at the front gate. I'll be back in ten."

Oliver's only response is half-whine/half-groan, looking at the phone at his hand, and then back up at his friend and publicist.

"That's all you've got to give 'em, ten minutes," Tommy pleads. "Come on buddy, I know you got one more in you. Just remember, tease 'em up, but don't let 'em finish."

"You're disgusting."

"You know what I mean," Tommy sobers, just a little, just enough to go into work mode, what Oliver has dubbed his "Spin̈al Tommy" persona. It's Tommy, just not turned to eleven. "Give them a little, but don't answer everything."

"I'm not going to tell them that I 'die' in the season finale," Oliver parrots with mock-diligence and over-exaggerated air quotes.

"Attaboy."

"Don't you think constantly making me repeat it is a pretty good way to get me to slip up and accidentally say it?" Oliver asks teasingly. "You've got it right there at the front of my brain. How's a dummy like me gonna be able to stop himself from blurting it out?"

"I'd say that's some ugly thinking for such a pretty face," Tommy fires back over his shoulder as he makes his way out of the trailer. "C'mon Ollie, just charm this one last girl, or guy, and then we're off to San Fran! Hiatus time! Babes by the Bay, baby!"

Oliver sighs again, heavily, but Tommy's already shutting the screen door behind him. He raises the phone in his hand like a brick and hits send, dialing the number that's already on the screen.

"Mr. Merlyn, I have Felicity Smoak for Oliver."

"It's me, Caitlin," he says, rolling his eyes as Tommy's assistant begins to sputter immediately. She's a sweet girl, really, he just can't tell why he makes her so nervous. I mean, he sort of can, but doesn't she talk to actors all day long?

"Right...of course Oliver, Mr. Queen!" Caitlin stammers "I've got her for you, just, right, one moment."

The line cuts her off, but the call still sounds open, so he asks half-heartedly into the void.

"Hello?

"Mr. Queen?"

The voice on the other end is familiar, but not in the way that he's used to.

He's always been good, but not great, with reporters. As a Queen, a level of distrust and distance between himself and members of the press is essentially scripted into his DNA. He remembers names, certain voices, but rarely any in specific.

As far the entertainment writers go, bloggers and the like, he always ends up talking to them between scenes, or over lunch, or right before hiatus. He's always tired and unfocused and they all ask essentially the same questions, all want essentially the same thing from him, so it's not his fault if they always seem to blend together a little bit in his head.

But this one sounds...different?

He shakes the thought from his head, focuses himself on the same platitudes and semi-spoilery hints he's dropped the last half dozen reporters he's talked to today. Tommy's right, just get through this last one and then he's off on a much-needed hiatus.

"Yes, this is Oliver,"

"Hi Mr. Queen, Felicity Smoak," she answers, and he can't help it, he's still trying to place her.

"Smoak?" he asks, trying to sound nonchalant. "Have we talked before?"

"A long time ago," she says sunnily. "I used to cover you guys back in season one, before Barry Allen came on board. Now he's our main comic book-slash-nerd culture guy. Not that all your fans are nerds, of course. Though, nerd culture is actually pretty mainstream cool these days, so maybe that's not…"

He should be annoyed by this. Really he should. But he kind of just wants to listen to her ramble for the next ten minutes. And, because he can't help himself anymore, he puts her on speakerphone mid-babble and uses the browser on Tommy's phone to search her name. "Showing results for Felicity _Smoak_," Google chastises him as he clicks on the image tab. There aren't many photos of her, but the first few results are all the same picture in varying sizes, what must be her byline photo. She's _cute_, he realizes. She's dressed professionally for the photo, of course, but he can just picture her without the glasses, hair down instead of in that sleek ponytail. And those _eyes_.

There's some silence on the other end of the line, and he realizes, belatedly, it must be his turn to talk now.

"So, um...where's Barry today?"

"Tied up with Suicide Squad and Star Wars news," she sighs. "Unfortunately, we're stuck with each other.".

Leave it to his last phoner of the day to make him want to stay on the line for another few hours.

"Okay, well, um…" he trails off, suddenly nervous? Which is absolutely crazy. "Let's get started?"

"Right," she says. "Well I was just wondering if you would talk to me a little bit about...your favorite alcoholic beverage."

_Huh?_

* * *

"Well here's the thing," she continues, almost conspiratorially. "I've decided that I'm quitting my job today. And after I do that, I'm going to go down to the bar, and I'm going to have a drink. And I'd like for it to be a very good drink. So, I'm taking suggestions."

"If you're quitting your job," he starts to ask, and she's thankful that he sounds more curious than annoyed, "why are you on the phone with me?"

"The big bosses haven't left yet, I've got to keep up appearances," she glances through the glass walls of the conference room to see the editorial offices starting to empty for the evening. It's Friday, so people are hustling their way out as quickly as possibly, but there are a few stragglers, one of which, she is annoyed to notice, is her managing editor, Ray Palmer. "They can see if I'm still here, but they can't hear what I'm saying. So I'm going to bullshit my way through the rest of these interviews, which are my last assignments of the day-slash-forever, I'm going to send a very strongly-worded email to my managing editor, and I'm going to walk out of this office and never look back."

"Why?"

"I can't write another Kardashian story, Oliver," she says, the words flowing out of her mouth before she can stop to remember if he's got any ties to the famous family that she should be wary of. "I can't do it. I won't."

He laughs a little at that, sounding slightly more surprised than anything. The sound makes her heart skip a beat.

"And where are you going, Felicity?" Her eyes go wide, and she can't tell if it's because of how his question sounds in her head or because she's realizing she just called him by his first name. He continues quickly, like he can somehow see her reaction, covering his words. "I mean... who's going to...who's going to be taking over for you?"

She knows that the question he's really asking is, "_Am I going to have to do this damn phoner again?"_

"I don't know," she says in a little trance, because she honestly hadn't thought about it until now. She had thought of quitting before sure, dreamed of it. But she had never really considered the logistics. "Do you think Miley Cyrus's tits have been out in public enough that they've developed cognizant thought? They might be able to write stories about themselves at this point."

He laughs again, a little louder this time, and she returns the sound almost involuntarily. But when she looks up, Ray Palmer is glaring daggers at her from his corner of the editorial office and she sobers immediately. She's strayed off-course somewhere, and as nice as it is to make this hunky television star laugh at her dumb jokes, she's got some serious fake interviewing to do.

"So, Mr. Queen, what do you think of the Blue Jays so far this season?"

He sputters in disbelief, and that's the sound that makes her grin harder than anything yet.

"Hold on," he says. "I have to check and make sure I didn't accidentally dial a 1-900 fantasy number."

"Please," she laughs. "You're a jock from Toronto. Besides, everyone has Twitter. It might be my last day on the job, but that doesn't mean I didn't do my research."

"You called me Oliver," he says, ignoring her, voice as soft as she's heard it yet. "Before."

"I'm sorry," she breathes, surprised at his sudden serious change of pace. "I got carried away. It's been quite a day. Well, you understand, it's your time that I'm wasting as part of this crazy stunt."

"I could always hang up, you know," he warns, but the teasing way he says it lets her know he's not planning on it.

"You could," she says, almost eagerly. "Or you could talk to me about Josh Donaldson's hot streak. Come on, wouldn't you rather do that than answer the same seven questions from each of my colleagues?"

"Actually, you're my last talk of the day," he admits, and something flutters in her chest. Whatever crazy plan she was half-forming in her head rapidly dissolves in an unbidden rush of disappointment.

* * *

"Oh," she says then, and if he didn't know better he'd think she sounded almost bummed? "I'm sorry, I'll let you go, I don't want to waste your time. I'm sure you're eager to get started on your hiatus."

"Well, I…" he's stuck, because she's right. He should go, he's got a flight to catch, drinks to consume, sun to soak up. But for the life of him, all he wants to do is keep talking to her. The sound of her voice, her quick wit and teasing tone makes his chest and head feel light like he hasn't felt in years. She's fresh air he just wants to keep breathing.

"I gotta tell you though," she interrupts his thoughts and he grins because that little saucy flirt in her voice is back. "I could probably write this story either way."

"You think?"

"Sure," she drawls before snapping into an over-exaggerated old-timey reporter impression that cracks his smile all the way across his face. "We've got something just incredible planned for our season finale. Something that will change the whole world of this show as we know it. You laugh, you'll cry, nothing will ever be the same again."

He's glad no one's here to see the expression on his face, because he probably looks like a goddamn fool right now. Eyes bugging with a grin he couldn't wipe from his face if he tried.

"You've really got us pegged, huh?"

"I just know how the game is played," she answers matter-of-factly. "You're going to tell me a couple pre-approved plot points, most of which, spoiler alert, are already on the internet. You're going to tease up what you've been told to tease without revealing anything major."

"Why don't I meet you for that drink instead?" he finds himself asking, without even thinking about it, without remembering that he's supposed to be on a plane to San Francisco in less than six hours.

"Huh?"

Her response is less of a word and more of an incredulous exhaled breath.

"I'll tell you what my favorite drink is, and maybe, if you're lucky, I'll tell you some real spoilers."

"Wait, seriously?"

"Well, it's not like you'd be able to use them, right?" he says with a smile. "Not after that strongly worded email you're about to send."

"What about co-star-slash-on-again-off-again girlfriend Laurel Lance?" she says lightly and methodically, like she's reading it to him. "Don't you think she might have something to say about this?"

"Just co-star," he corrects her. "Since mid-season two or so. You've been off the beat too long."

"Is that difficult, still working together?"

"Are you actually asking me real questions now?" he barks out a laugh, incredulous. "You must really not want to go out with me."

"I just.." she trails off, sounding less confident than she has since they started the call. "I don't know. I've got a couple more people to talk to and…"

He's come on too strong. He didn't even mean to do it, to be honest, he usually doesn't have to. He's a TV star and, in this town, pretty women who are into that are a dime a dozen. But there's just something about her he can't shake. She's smart and beautiful and jesus, she wanted to talk to him about baseball. So he asks again.

"Why don't I call you later then?"

"Why?" she asks, and he can tell she's genuinely curious, so he answers her honestly.

"I like talking to you, Felicity," he tells her, trying to stop himself before he says too much. "I'd like to do it again."

"I could just call you," she teases, some of her confidence back, though she still sounds slightly awed. "I have your number after all."

* * *

"Hang on," he says then, and she knows this is the kicker. He's finally come to his senses and he's going to hang up and she's going to lay her head on her pillow tonight convinced this was the best daydream she's ever had. Maybe it actually is, and this is the moment she wakes up.

"That's my publicist's number, I'll give you mine," he says then and her jaw drops to the floor. "I wouldn't want you calling him instead."

He tell her the digits and she traces the number on her notepad, stopping herself before she gets carried away and adds any middle school flourishes like a heart over the "i" in his first name or a scripted _Mrs. Felicity Queen_ in the margin, remembering to tease him again.

"Why?" she asks. "Afraid he'll ream me out for wasting your precious time?"

"No, I'm afraid he'll ask you out first," he says and honestly, at this point, she's just waiting for Ashton Kutcher to come storming in with a camcorder. Didn't someone tell her they were bringing that show back?

"Well who knows," she bites back her goofy smile. "I've got fifteen minutes of Roy Harper's time to waste next. You might not be my only offer of the day."

"Roy likes hockey," he says and she can hear an answering goofy grin in his voice (and because he's a freaking television star she can also see it clearly in her head, and isn't that just a perk). "Ask him about the Kings."

"Well, thank you, Mr. Queen," she takes a long-ish pause (because, seriously, did this just happen?) before saying, almost involuntarily, "I'll talk to you soon."

He exhales so forcefully she has to pull her ear away from the phone for a second, but when she lifts it back, she hears him answer.

"I hope so."

* * *

_A/N: Should I go on? I'm thinking maybe he meets her at the bar?_


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Ok, seriously? I can't thank you guys enough for the awesome response to this fic. I didn't even know what it was when I started writing it and the comments and everything else mean so much to me as a new-ish fic writer. I'm so psyched to be able to contribute a little bit of AU fluff in these dark canonical times. _

_That said, I realized that I had some pretty serious timeline issues in the first chapter that I needed to address if I was going to move forward with this, namely that there would be no baseball happening if it was supposed to be winter hiatus. Oops! Now, the easy fix would have been to take the baseball stuff out, but there was already some more baseball in this chapter when I realized my mistake, so I'm shifting things around a little bit and making it the summer break instead of winter break. I also went back and made some minor changes in the first chapter to make it all work a little better. _

_(Also, I'm sorry if you're not into baseball, that's where my head's at right now, and I swear, it's mostly in service of Felicity being adorable, and we're all into that, right?)_

_Okay, sorry for the long and winding note, here's chapter two! Please keep the feedback coming, it's been so crazy awesome and I love you all. This fandom, I stg._

**I'm a Slave to the Wires Ch. 2**

Oliver's still staring at Tommy's phone, grinning like an idiot when his friend and publicist comes barging back into his trailer. He might have been able to school his features in time to fool almost anyone else, but there's no hiding it from the guy who's been his best friend since they were in diapers.

"And just what are you smiling at, Grumpy Cat?"

Tommy snatches the phone from his hand before he can close out of the browser window where he had googled Felicity's name, taking one look at the screen and letting out an exaggerated catcall.

"She's pretty," he croons. "Who is she...Felicity Smoak? You know her?"

"Just talked to her," Oliver snaps, plucking the phone back from his friend and closing out the window himself, selfishly taking one last quick look. "She was my last phoner."

"Did you tell her all your secrets?" Tommy's still teasing but his words rattle around in Oliver's skull for a few seconds before he's saved by the bell, or rather the buzz, as the tell-tale sound of a cell phone alert rattles through the trailer. When he realizes it's not the one in his hand, Oliver's eyes snap over to the trailer's desk/kitchen table where his personal phone is lying.

Tommy takes advantage of his distraction and snags his cell back as Oliver jumps up to check his phone, his heart thudding at a text message from an unknown number.

It's just an address, and when he clicks through, the map shows him that it's a bar, a little east of Hollywood. It's _her_ he thinks, hopes, as the phone buzzes again.

_I'll be there at 7._

*buzz*

_It's Felicity, by the way._

*buzz*

_I'm sorry I was trying to be mysterious and cool and then I realized it would come through as an unknown number and then you might just ignore it._

*buzz*

_Oh my god, I'm babbling via text. I didn't think that was possible._

*buzz*

_Please disregard. All of this. I'm so sorry. Have a great night, I'm going to go put my head in a bucket. Of tequila._

He taps out a quick reply when it seems like she's finally done, chuckling to himself.

_At least let me buy you the bucket._

He can see her answering, watches that little bubble for what feels like forever, before she sends back a one word reply.

_Seriously?_

God she's cute, he thinks with a grin as he types the word back to her in the affirmative, leaving off the question mark. He can't even see her, and still he's struck by how cute she is.

_I've got to see this babble in person, _he writes. _I don't think texts and calls do it justice._

When he finally looks up, his best friend is staring at him, looking nothing short of shell-shocked.

"Okay, seriously, what is going on with you, man?"

"Tommy, can I take your car for a little bit?" Oliver ignores him, mind singularly focused. "I took a black car to set this morning."

"Huh? I thought we were supposed to get dinner before we headed to the airport?"

"I just need to...I've got to meet up with…"

Tommy snatches his phone this time, scrolling through the texts.

"Will you stop doing that?"

"Ooh, tequila!" his friend laughs, skimming the messages. "This the pretty girl?"

"Felicity," Oliver corrects him, jaw clenched more than is probably necessary.

"Felicity's the pretty girl?" Tommy teases. "Ollie, level with me here, buddy. Is this like, a secret Tinder situation? Because you know I warned you about that."

"Just let me take the car, Tommy," he asks again, worried he's starting to sound desperate. "I'll meet you at the airport."

"Oliver Queen, I love you like a brother, but when you say you will meet me at the airport, you most definitely mean you will be late to the airport," his publicist scolds. "Just because it's a private plane doesn't mean it can take off whenever we feel like it."

"Tommy," he levels with his best friend then, playing Rich Boy Ollie for everyone's benefit. "That's exactly what it means. And even if it didn't, I will be there by 10 o'clock, according to plan. I just need the car for a little."

"9:30, Ollie," Tommy warns, even as he pulls his car fob off his key ring and tosses it at Oliver. "Van Nuys at 9:30. We take off at 10."

"Fine," Oliver concedes.

"And how do you suggest that I get there, by the way?" Tommy asks then. "Because I'm being so incredibly generous and letting you ditch me and all."

"I think you should ask Laurel for a ride," Oliver says, and then with a deep breath, because he's made more than one big decision in the minutes since he hung up the phone with Felicity, he continues. "And I think you should ask her to come on the trip with you."

"What?"

"We've been broken up for nearly two years now," he says, and the terrified look in Tommy's eyes tells him that this conversation is long overdue. "That's never gonna be 'on again', I promise you. And I know you and her.."

"Oliver, man I swear, nothing's ever happened," Tommy answers too quickly, holding up his hands. Oliver knows that he believes him, but deeper than that, he knows it doesn't matter either way. This thing between his best friend and his ex has been brewing for a while, and he's ignored it, selfishly, for too long. But not anymore.

"I know," he tells Tommy. "You're my best friend, and I know you've tried to shove down whatever it is you feel for her. Honestly, I think she's been doing the same thing. But maybe you shouldn't."

"I don't..." his best friend sputters for a second, but he doesn't try and correct him, just blinks at him with big baffled eyes. "Where is this coming from?"

"I'm not entirely sure," Oliver tells him, scrubbing a hand over his head, still buzzed short from shooting the finale. Part of him wants to tell Tommy about Felicity, but he doesn't know a non-insane way to say _the girl on the phone sounded like sunshine and talked to me about baseball and if I don't see her tonight it's all I'm going to be able to think about_. So he keeps that to himself and tells his friend the larger truth, the one that's been stewing inside him for almost a week now.

"I guess some of it's probably got to do with shooting three days worth of scenes where your character gets a sword through the chest and takes his last dying breaths thinking about the most important people in his life," he admits, letting out a humorless chuckle.

"Yeah, that sounds like that might do it," Tommy replies softly. His friend's serious eyes come out maybe a few times a year, but they never fail to sock Oliver right in the gut.

"I just think you and I have been messing around for a long time," he continues. "Maybe it's time we try things a different way. Take some shots that could be the real deal."

"Is that where you're going?" Tommy asks. "You're taking a shot?"

"I don't know," Oliver tells him honestly, though part of his brain is screaming the affirmative. "Maybe."

* * *

The editorial offices thankfully empty a few minutes into her interview with Roy Harper, as she tries to shake off the anxiety that built up over her one-sided text conversation with Oliver. He was sweet, but she's still mortified, and the feeling in the pit in her stomach only doubled when Ray Palmer shot her a look on his way out the door.

It's that feeling though, that allows her follow through with her plan, and Mr. Harper seems even more relieved than she does when she cuts their interview short, hustling him off the phone. She makes her way on unsteady legs from the conference room to her desk in the bullpen, opening the email that's been saved in her drafts folder for weeks and reading it over once, twice, before pressing send.

This is insanity.

And then it's evening rush hour on a Friday in Los Angeles, so she's crawling along on the 101, with plenty of time to just sit in her car, shuffling through Spotify and thinking about how late she's going to be and just how insane this is.

He's not going to be at the bar. Of course he isn't. He was just being polite, there's no way he's actually going to show. She'll never speak to him again, all she'll have to remember him by is the recording of their phone interview and a screenshot of their text message chain forever backed up on her black box external hard drive. Also, he's on television, so you know, she'll see him all the time.

She's tempted to call Iris, but where would she even start? Any combination of words that describe what's happened since she dialed the number for Oliver Queen's publicist sound absurd even in her head, she can't imagine saying them out loud to anyone with a straight face. Plus, there's no way this is actually happening, so she'll just call her friend and roommate from the bar when he's not there and calmly explain that she's finally lost her mind.

* * *

Oliver gets to the bar at 7 sharp, but sits in Tommy's car for seven full minutes before he goes inside. The darkened room is semi-occupied, with a few people seated at the wood-paneled bar and a few couples at tables by the front facing windows. None of them are her. _Traffic_, he tells himself, tamping down any disappointment or concern.

He takes a seat at one end of the bar, a few stools between him and the next patron, and admires the place. It's cozy but classy, with a mostly young hipster clientele, but he's pleased to notice that only one TV is silently turned to a black and white movie, the other is on ESPN. He catches a guy at one of the tables giving him a double, triple take before leaning in to whisper something to his date, but this isn't a part of town where he expects anyone to pay him any serious attention. Even if George Clooney walked in right now, he's sure 99% of the patrons would look once, tweet about it, then studiously pretend to ignore him.

He notices that the bar has a dozen taps of good craft beer and the wine selection looks impressive. It's not the kind of high-end Hollywood spot Tommy loves dragging him to, but it's no dive either. He kind of loves it.

"Got a good IPA?" he asks the absolute statue of a bartender, who looks like he should be a bouncer instead. He's got the build for it for sure, and a demeanor that says "let me punt your ass out the door," rather than "let me get you a cold beverage."

But he hands Oliver a beer list and pours his selected draft expertly, tossing him a coaster before essentially grunting a question at him.

"Need a menu?"

"No thanks," Oliver tells him. "I'm waiting for somebody."

Then, because she picked the bar and it's worth a shot, he asks, "Felicity Smoak? You know her?"

"You might be waiting a while," the man tells him as an answer, narrowing his eyes as he runs a rag over a section of the bar. "She usually works until eight or so."

"I actually think she might be a little early," Oliver tells him, puffing his chest just a little because he can't help it. This guy might know her, but she's on her way to meet him. Hopefully. "She said she was uh, quitting today."

The bartender pauses for a long second, eyes still narrowed at him, before nodding slightly.

"Good," he says approvingly, more of the news than him, but Oliver feels like he's got an opportunity here.

"Oliver Queen," he says, extending a hand.

The man's eyes flicker with recognition, but unlike the majority of people he meets in public these days, there's no spark of excitement to go along with it, just steely acknowledgement.

He reaches a massive hand out and shakes with what Oliver thinks is slightly excessive force, but the message is clear: mess with _her_, deal with him.

"John," he grunts before turning back to the taps.

Oliver figures that's the end of that scintillating conversation and turns his attention back to his beer and SportsCenter, before he hears the door swing open. He turns around and it's her. She's beautiful and she's here and she spots him from across the room. His heart thuds hard for the second or third time that day as she makes her way over, pausing to say hello to one of the seated couples and slap a backwards high five with one of the busboys. And then she's in front of him.

He blinks at her, only now realizing he's been picturing her face since they hung up the phone a few hours ago. But Google and his imagination had nothing on having her here in front of him. She's got her glasses on, but her hair is down, and kind of wavy, like maybe she had it up earlier. And she's got a blue dress on, he notices, so those eyes are out of control. She's _beautiful_ and she's here.

* * *

He's here. Here's here and, oh shit, he's _beautiful_.

Felicity spots him at the bar immediately, because of course she does, and at first all she can do is mentally slap herself for the stupid assumption that he couldn't possibly be more handsome in person. When he catches her eye, she's so thankful that there are some friendly faces around to distract her, because the hopeful look he's got stretched across his stupid handsome face is too much for her to look at directly.

So she says hi to T.J. and his wife and she does her dumb handshake with Cesar and then finally, when she can't avoid it any longer, she walks right up and stands him front of him, pressing her knees together to stop them from giving out under her.

"Hi," she manages. "I'm Felicity."

"I know," he croaks out, like _he's_ the nervous one, and wait, what did he just say? "I'm Oliver."

"I _know_," she parrots back slowly, teasingly, as she slides onto the stool beside him, turning to John, who's already setting a glass of red wine in front of her.

"Thank you, Digg," she says sweetly, and the bartender just shoots her a look before picking up a shot glass and placing it in front of her with raised eyebrows.

"Oliver here says there might be some congratulations in order."

"More like some begging you for shifts is in order," she admits with a little sigh.

"So you sent that strongly-worded email?" Oliver interrupts, innocently enough, but she immediately turns on him, eyes narrowing.

"You know, that's the second time you've said it like that," she says sharply, curious to see if he'll squirm, slightly impressed at her own forwardness. "I'm starting to think you're mocking me."

"I wouldn't dare," he says, holding up his hands, voice jumping an octave as he notices John glaring at him too. "I swear! I was just curious."

"Okay then, prove it," she challenges. "Do a shot."

"Okay, then."

"Digg, you too," she commands. "And where's Andy?"

Digg's little brother, a scaled-down version of the burly bartender, rounds the corner then, sliding a keg across the floor.

"Andy!" she calls to him. "Come do a shot with us!"

"Oh, no way am I doing a shot with you, Smoak," the younger man fires back. "You're my enemy this week!"

"Oh, come on, Andy," she whines a little, "I just quit my job! You can't be mad at me just because Team Pretty Faces is putting the beat down on you."

"Team Pretty Faces?" Oliver asks and she grins at him mischievously.

"Andy here is upset because he needed one more for his fantasy baseball league, and he literally begged me to do it," she tells him, admitting, "now he's mad because I'm better at it than him."

"She picked guys based on how cute they are!" Andy explodes in a clearly well-practiced rant. "And she ends up with a team full of studs: Clayton Kershaw, Dee Gordon, Bryce Harper, Mookie Betts! Even her later round picks are killing it. Joc Pedersen's her fourth outfielder! Kid hit a grand slam _on her bench_ tonight and she's _still_ beating me by fifty points!"

* * *

"Andy's not a very good loser," she turns to him with an exaggerated pout as the barback huffs his way into the back to grab another keg. Oliver so badly wants to kiss it off her face, but settles for leaning in close.

"You did your research, huh?" he asks slyly, remembering her line from their phone call earlier.

Her eyes widen in surprise for just a second before she nods silently, biting back her grin. He's kind of thrilled to have taken her aback, even momentarily, but she recovers quickly.

"Of course I did my research." she tells him, matter-of-fact. "Like, 90% of baseball players have pretty faces, Oliver, they're _baseball players_. I may not be a huge fan, but I _am_ a huge fan of winning."

"You know I did play a few years of Little League," he says, trotting out the Ollie Queen smarm, just to see how it plays on her. She just swats him on the arm.

"So," he says, snapping back to himself, striving for nonchalance. "They _know_ you here."

"They know you everywhere," she fires back. "Figured I'd even the playing field a little."

"Even?" he mocks teasing. "I'd say this is definitely tipping things in your favor."

"Well, this way," she says with a little glint in her eye, "if we have to deal with any of your adoring public, I've got some of my own around."

"Yeah, that guy definitely does not adore me," Oliver tells her, tipping his beer with a pointed glare towards John.

"Oh, Digg's a teddy bear dressed up like a grizzly," she waves him off as the bartender returns with two more shot glasses and a bottle. "His wife Lyla owns the place, she's the _real_ hard ass."

"True enough," John says, pouring their shots before lifting his in Felicity's direction. He's actually cracking a smile, which would blow Oliver's mind except he totally gets it. She's like a goddamn ray of sunshine. It's no wonder this guy's all grizzly and protective, she's got him charmed ten ways from Sunday.

He echoes John's toast and throws back his shot.

"To Felicity."

* * *

He's got to stop looking at her like that. Because when he looks at her like that, and he _looks like that_, she just wants to smash her face against his and kiss him until he's so dumbstruck he reveals what kind of game he's playing at. She can't believe he's actually here, that he's smiling at her, that instead of being a massively awkward social encounter, everything with him is so strangely easy.

"I used to work in political news," she tells him a glass of wine later, because the usual first date "so hey, what do you do for a living?" conversation has pretty much been rendered moot by how they met. He knows exactly what she does, or used to do, anyway.

And she definitely knows what he does. Like, DVD-box-set knows. She's trying her absolute hardest to be cool, but what's really amazing to her is he doesn't seem to mind when she's not. She has to keep taking deep breaths and reminding herself that he's an actor. Maybe she should let her friend who works for the head of his network know that he does a really convincing "smitten."

"What was that like?" he asks, sounding genuinely interested even though she's nearly forgotten what he's asking about.

"Did you watch The Newsroom?"

"No," he admits, a little sheepish like maybe he thinks this is a test.

"Me neither!" she exclaims. "And I really wanted to! But I just couldn't because I was working in one. Just seeing their promos stressed me out."

He grins at her again, and to be honest, it's driving her kind of crazy that the only thing her babbles seem to do is make him smile. Because what an unfairly amazing smile it is.

"I hated it," she confesses, ducking her head back towards her glass of wine. "It was nice getting paid to write, but it's just such an upsetting world to work in day-to-day. It's just bad news and people being horrible to each other, all the time."

"I get that," he answers in a way that makes her think he's either dumb or takes his job as a TV superhero way too seriously. Incredulity must be written on her face when she frowns at him, because he continues quickly, turning away to stare intently into his beer foam.

"No, I mean for you," he says then. "There's just, ah, you're too...there's too much light in you. For a job like that."

Her breath catches in her throat and she can't really form words for a few seconds, so she's thankful when he continues with no prompting.

"I mean, I sort of get what that's like, a little," he says, talking quickly, almost like he's trying to cover up what he just said with a few layers of new words. "I did this movie a few years ago, during the summer break, and it was horrible. We were in the middle of the desert for six weeks, the director was a dick, half the cast didn't want to be there but were getting paid too much not to be. It was toxic."

She's still just staring at him, and she's knows that she's really going to have to come up with some words soon. She's literally never had this problem before, she thinks, taking a sip of her wine for courage.

"And THEN, to make matters worse," he barges on, chuckling self-deprecatingly. "I was so bad in it, they ended up redubbing all my lines in post with another actor."

She chokes a little on her wine then, jolted by a memory, and he furrows his brow in concern.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry," she sputters out, coughing around a chuckle and a swallow. "That might be my fault."

"Huh?"

"My friend Iris and I, we went to a midnight screening," she tells him, remembering with near-hysterical clarity now. "She's a reporter too, and I totally told her that it wasn't you. I think she broke the story, I'm so sorry. I mean, I'm not the reason they did it, but I might be the reason people kind of talked about it."

His eyes go wide. "I'm not even sure what to say to that."

"If it makes you feel better," she continues, laying a hand on his arm and grinning up at him. "That movie was really, really bad. And only a tiny little percentage of it was your fault."

* * *

He looks down at her hand on his arm, and then places his own over it, rubbing his thumb against her soft skin. When he glances back up, the mischievous part of her smile is gone and her eyes are wide, but she doesn't pull away.

_Come away with me, Felicity._

That's what he wants to ask, but he settles for something safer.

"How did you know they dubbed me?" he asks. "My manager said they did a pretty good job covering it."

"You never saw it?"

"Didn't see the point," he admits with a sigh. "I'm not really in it. It's like, whatever the opposite of an animated movie is. I'm just a shell."

She looks at him for a while then and he feels the heat of her hand pressing against his arm and he thinks he'd love to keep surprising her, because it makes her blue eyes look bottomless.

"I just knew," she tells him with a shrug, her voice a little softer. "I..we had done a couple phoners for the first season of the show and I could just tell. The first line where your back was turned, I could tell. I whispered something to Iris, she sent a text. By the time we were out of the theater, her story was filed."

"I just can't believe you saw that piece of crap on opening night," he huffs out a laugh to lighten the concern in her voice, but it backfires on him when it breaks her little trance.

"Anyway, you're kind of lucky," she says, pulling her hand away and wiping it absently on her upper thigh, even though he knows firsthand that it's not sweaty. "At least a crappy movie shoot ends eventually."

"That's true."

"I stayed at that news job way too long," she goes on, sliding her finger around the rim of her wine glass absently. "That's why this time around, I promised myself I'd get out as soon as things got intolerable, not two years later."

He's pretty sure now that there's something she's not telling him, but he aims for levity, wanting to see her smile again, remembering what she said to him on the phone.

"Just couldn't keep up with the Kardashians?"

"Yeah, something like that," she says quietly, with a little sigh that makes him certain it's nothing like that.

* * *

He's silent for a second and she can't understand why he cares, but she's pretty sure he's about to pry deeper into her employment misfortunes. So, when he speaks next, he floors her in more ways than one.

"I think you should come to San Francisco with me," he says simply.

"Oh yeah?" she's chuckling at his joke before she glances over and realizes that he's not making one.

"Yes," he says, like he's simply suggested she have another drink. Which, by the way, she's totally down for right now. "My friend Tommy and I are going north for the hiatus. You just quit your job, so i know your schedule's wide open."

"Yeah, but…" her laughter dies down and he talks over it anyway.

"Come with me, tonight," he says, looking right at her, dead serious, locking onto her with those beautiful blue eyes that look so earnest she forgets how to breathe. "Get on a plane and come to San Francisco for the weekend."

Something in her brain is shorting out. That's the only explanation for this, and when she finally manages to spit out a response, it's far less graceful than she had hoped.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to get you to come to San Francisco with me," he says again, like it's that easy.

"I can't," she answers quickly because, really, it's the only thing to say.

"Why not?"

"It's not that I'm worried about what I've read about you," she tells him, maybe a little too honestly. "Or what I've _written_ about you."

"Okay…"

"I just, I made sort of a pact with myself not to get involved with guys in the industry," she admits, leaving the _anymore_ unspoken. "Not that you're trying to 'get involved' or anything…"

"I am," he cuts off her babble and her breath again. "I know it's kind of fast and a little crazy, but Felicity, I don't want to spend two weeks out of town wondering what could have been if I had just asked. And, for the record, I am. Trying to get involved."

"You are," she breathes. "And you are right, smack dab, in the middle of the industry."

"But you're not," he points out and he's right, but damn her if that doesn't sting a little. "At least, not at this very moment. Not this weekend."

"Plus," she recovers, ignoring what's starting to sound like logic coming from his lips, "it's a little Don Draper, isn't it? The whole 'Come away with me, Felicity' thing."

"But do you want to come?"

"That's irrelevant," her brain insists, and her heart's trying to pound its way out of her chest to shut it up.

"But do you want to come?"

"It's not that simple."

He leans in then and damn him for smelling so good. Damn him for being so close and so warm and so stupid handsome.

"I think it is simple," he says, dropping his voice in a way that makes her whole face feel hot. "Come away with me, Felicity."

And she bolts.

* * *

He sits frozen for a few seconds, debating whether or not to go after her, but when he catches John's eye behind the bar, he knows immediately what to do. He'll swear for the rest of his life that the guy gave him the most imperceptible of nods, but in any case, the way his icy protective look had nearly thawed to one of approval is all the reassurance Oliver needs, as he throws too many bills down on the bar and bolts for the door.

He finds her around the corner, in the driveway that leads back to the parking lot, but she's facing him, like she had turned back, maybe debating whether or not to come back in. When her eyes finally raise from her shoes, they lock on him and she lets out a huge breath.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I was worried if I sat there any longer, I was going to kis-"

He cuts her off with his lips, wrapping an arm around her waist and threading one through her hair. She makes a little sound into his mouth, shooting her tongue out to touch his and honestly, that combined with the way her hands thread around his neck and scratch a little at the back of his head is enough to weaken his knees a little. Or maybe that's just the excuse he uses to justify pressing her back into the side of the building.

"Yeah," she sighs when he finally pulls away. "That."

"Come away with me, Felicity" he asks again.

"You know," she smiles, still breathing a little heavy. "That's the second time you've said it like that."

"Please," he's just flat out begging now, pressing his forehead to hers and locking eyes, feeling the little brushes of her eyelashes against his own.

Her eyelids flutter once, twice, but she doesn't break his stare, until he hears her whisper.

"Okay."

Then he kisses her again.

* * *

_**A/N: So THAT was way longer than I thought it was going to be! Let me know if you're still on board. Next stop San Fran? And maybe a slightly-awkward plane ride with Tommy and Laurel?**_


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Sorry for the wait! Not going to lie, this chapter was a toughie (and not just because my brain is totally in roadtrip!Olicity fluff mode). It still feels a little bit like filler, but I think it was a necessary stepping stone to finally get these crazy kids to San Fran and fully bring Tommy and Laurel into the fold. Also, it gets a little angsty? Let me know what you think!_

**I'm a Slave to the Wires Ch. 3**

"Where's your place?" Oliver breathes against her mouth when they finally pull back for air, and Felicity has to physically bite her bottom lip to keep from ignoring him and just diving right back in.

He rocks against her at the sight, but keeps their lips apart, settling instead for nuzzling his nose against hers as he whispers, almost pleading.

"Felicity…"

Her place, right. She's going to San Francisco. She agreed to it. She's going to be impulsive and crazy and she's going to do it with Oliver Queen. Not, _do it,_ do it, well maybe _do it_, but not right away..._three, two, one._

"Just down the street," she whispers, and before she can savor another second of having his ridiculous body pressed up against her, he's pulling away, tugging her by the hand towards the parking lot.

He follows her to her house in a black Porsche convertible that seems just a little incongruous with her impression of the man that Oliver Queen is so far. She does find it a little worrisome, how she keeps making these assumptions about someone with whom she's had two whole conversations, but there's just _something_ about him. She feels attuned to him in the strangest way, and it doesn't hurt that he keeps looking at her like she's a fireworks display or something.

Her house is mercifully empty and Felicity leaves him standing in her living room while she goes to pack because there's absolutely no way she's ready for _Oliver Queen_ to see her bedroom, and also because she needs a minute to collect herself. Needs about a million minutes, really, she thinks, as her shaky hands slip over the loose doorknob she keeps meaning to ask Barry to fix.

She's always thought of her and Iris' place as a quaint little East Hollywood bungalow, but thinking about him standing in the front room, all she can see is a shabby young adult pad. The carpet is cheap and dingy, the couch is a relic from Joe's bachelor pad, the furniture and decorations are a mismatched array of eclectic tastes, a physical representation of the two smart and successful but slightly scatterbrained young women who call the place home. He's probably got a swanky house in the Hills or a condo in Malibu. Maybe both, she remembers, he is old money, after all.

She distractedly packs a quick bag, tossing in her nicest dresses and shoes and whatever else feels fancy enough for a woman that's about to get on a plane with Oliver Queen. It's just a weekend, but she somehow feels like she's both overpacking and forgetting most of essentials, zipping the bag up and jumping about a foot in the air at the sound of a knock at the door.

"Felicity?" Oliver Queen is outside of her bedroom. She imagines it will probably soon be time for her to stop mentally referring to him by his full name. It's a little weird now that his tongue's been in her mouth.

"Yeah?" she answers, and she understands that he takes it as permission to come in, but it takes her half a second longer to register why that's a terrible idea. "No, wait!"

But of course, by that point, it's too late.

"Nice place..." he starts, before pausing abruptly. She winces, knowing the jig is up. "Is...is that a poster?"

"It's a lithograph," she mumbles, reddening immediately and pushing him backwards back out the door, pulling it shut behind her. _Yes, Felicity,_ her brain mocks, _semantics will surely save you now._

"You have a poster on your wall." He's standing so close to her and it sounds like he's smiling, but she can't bring herself to meet his eyes and she remembers her mantra: _he's an actor, he's an actor_. That whole flirty teasing thing he's doing with his voice could totally be a cover for "_code red, get the hell out!"_

"It is a _lithograph_," she repeats, jaw clenched, apparently still trying for some measure of dignity. "_Your_ network sent it to me as a promotion. And it is on my bookshelf. I did not put a nail in my wall for you. Or...for your show."

His fingers under her chin shock her into finally looking up and he _is_ smiling, right at her, his blue eyes sparkling and she tries her best to frown at him for teasing her, but when she can't do anything but grin she realizes she's already so far gone. At this point, she can't find it in her to care if this is a dream or a game or like, some cheesy bet from a rom-com where the super handsome famous guy has to land an average girl as part of a country club bet or whatever. It doesn't matter, because as long as he keeps looking at her and, _oh god_, kissing her like that, she's totally game.

He puts his hands on her cheeks delicately at the same time he presses his tongue into her mouth to twist around her own, and the contrast makes her knees gives out just a little. She wraps her arms around his solid waist, sliding her hands under his t-shirt and scoring her nails lightly against his lower back. It pulls a sound from him that makes her snap her head back in shock.

His hooded eyes lock on hers for just long enough for her to see that his pupils are nearly totally blown, and then he's dropping his head to her neck, licking and sucking a pattern that makes her moan and scrape her teeth against his earlobe.

"Felicity, who's car is that in the - oh my GOD!"

She hears her roommate before she sees her, but that's really Oliver's fault because he's got her pressed up against her bedroom door and he's blocking most of her view of the rest of the hall. Also, she's had her eyes closed, Felicity realizes, as they snap open, and with his head dipped to her neck she can clearly see Iris' shell-shocked expression over his shoulder as her roommate takes in the scene in front of her. Her eyes get impossible wider when Oliver turns around and realization hits.

"Oh my god, oh my GOD" Iris says, over and over again, until Oliver stops the broken record with an outstretched hand.

"Oliver Queen," he charms in her direction, but it's a lost cause.

"I...we...junket…"

"Yeah, I think you guys have probably met at some point. Iris works for the Times." Felicity takes the opportunity to pull Oliver by his hand, past her sputtering roommate and back into the front entryway.

"Wait here, just a sec," she says with a grin, patting her flattened palms on his chest and letting them linger for longer than is probably necessary. "And hey, actually do it this time."

He just keeps smiling at her and it makes her stumble a little bit as she turns back to the hallway. She breezes past Iris to grab her suitcase quickly, but she needn't have worried, as her roommate still hasn't budged an inch.

"Listen, I'm going to San Francisco for the weekend, okay?" Felicity looks in Iris' eyes, relaying the information in a steady voice that belies her true nerves. "Nod if you can understand me."

Her roommate nods, still speechless, eyes still wide.

"I would really love to stay here and freak out with you about this," she whispers a little, hazarding a glance in Oliver's direction. "But that would kind of defeat the purpose. I'll call you when we land, all right?"

Another nod.

They make it about three steps off the front porch before Felicity's cell phone starts exploding in her pocket.

"There she is."

"She okay?" Oliver chuckles.

"She will be," Felicity smiles back at him. "It's not everyday she walks in on me kissing a TV star in the hallway."

"No?"

"I mean, it happens, sure," she teases, mocking seriousness as he takes her suitcase and she makes her way to the passenger side door. "Just not that often."

* * *

"Ollie, buddy, tell me you're pulling onto the tarmac right now," Tommy's worried voice sounds over the car's speakers as Oliver guides the Porsche onto the 101. He's finally cooling down from the makeout session in Felicity's hallway, but his fingers still itch to touch her, so he reaches out for her hand. He's pretty sure he's never felt like this. Tingling with proximity, even though his head is about a million miles up in the clouds.

"Close," Oliver lies with a grin as she laces her fingers through his. "We'll be there in five, ten minutes."

"You bringing the pretty girl?"

"Hi Tommy," Felicity calls, and when Oliver turns to her in surprise, she just gives him a little shrug accompanied by a squeeze of his hand.

"Always a pleasure, Smoak," Tommy says and Oliver's brow furrows further.

"Wait, you two know each other?"

"Well, we're phone friends at least," Felicity tells him.

"As much as it may seem like it, Queen," his best friend chimes in, "you are not, in fact, my only client."

"Can you put her on the list at the airport?" Oliver asks brusquely, as a flash of something like envy shoots through him.

"Already done, my friend. By the way, I'm bringing copies of that P.T. Anderson script that Thea keeps hounding us about," Tommy tells him with a sigh. "Get ready to read."

"Can't wait," Oliver replies with little enthusiasm, noticing out of the corner of his eye how Felicity's eyebrows shoot up as he taps the button to end the call. "See you soon."

"They want you for the older brother?" Felicity asks before he can even get a word out. "The one who goes to jail?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"I didn't," she tells him, eyes wide in honesty. "But you'd be great for that."

"Thea thinks so too," he tells her, knowing his voice betrays his uncertainty, tinged with a little bit of shock.

"And what do you think?"

"That she's both my sister and my manager, so she's pretty inclined to tell me I'd be great in anything."

"And what do you think?" she asks again and damn, if he doesn't want to tell her. He wants to tell her everything, he realizes, but has just enough doubt to stop himself before her goes too far.

"Tommy thinks I shouldn't have to audition," he says, opting for another kind of honesty. "Says I've been number one on the call sheet for a top-rated show for four years now and we should only look at outright offers."

* * *

"What are you afraid of?" she asks him finally, deciding to cut right to the chase because it's so obvious there's something he's not telling her. He looks so vulnerable for someone who spends his work days fighting fake crime and it's pretty damn endearing, though truthfully, she's get to see a side of him that's not.

"I'm not," he snaps, too quick and sharp to hide the truth. He takes his eyes off the road to look at her warily, like he's afraid he's going to scare her off, but she just waits patiently.

"I just...it would be the first big movie I've done since the boxer thing," he continues, voice softening in honesty. "And you know uh, firsthand, how well that turned out."

"Yes, and let me apologize just one more time for my role in that fiasco." She smiles at him, considering her next words carefully. "You know you're better now, right?"

"Excuse me?" A little laugh.

"Not that you were bad, a bad actor before, necessarily..." Felicity covers, frowning at her inability to make the words come out right. "I just mean, in the first two seasons, you were a little...lighter? Looser somehow? I don't know, it just feels like you have more gravity now. Like you're paying more attention to the weight of your words. It's better. _You're_ better."

"I thought you didn't watch anymore," he asks with an eyebrow raised in her direction, teasing, but the depths of his eyes look so serious and she wonders if she's crossed the line.

"I said I stopped covering the show for work," she admits with a little smile. "I never said I stopped watching."

He just returns her smile then, taking her hand again, and she thinks her worries would fly out the window if the car had any.

Felicity's never been one for holding hands and she knows how cheesy it sounds, but she thinks now it might just be that she's been holding the wrong ones. Because Oliver's hand is big and warm and a little rough and there's no awkward sweaty palms and his thumb traces across her knuckles in a way that makes her breath catch in her throat.

The rest of the drive passes in near silence, both of them grinning stupidly at the passing cars. They keep glancing over at each other, but their eyes never actually meet. It should be cheesy, like it always is in the movies, but it's not somehow, and Felicity wonders just how many cliches he's going to prove her wrong about. She's so wrapped up in the thought, that she doesn't even notice the unhappy couple waiting impatiently for them when they pull into the private hanger.

* * *

_Shit._

Oliver's happy to see that Laurel's standing beside Tommy, until he pulls the Porsche close enough to the Merlyn Global jet to read their body language and realize that his best friend and his ex are standing at an awkward distance, decidedly avoiding each other's gaze.

"We need to talk," Laurel bites at him as soon as he's out of the car, ignoring Felicity completely.

"Laurel, can we at least do this on the plane?" Tommy pleads, rolling his eyes at Oliver uncomfortably. "Or, you know, not at all?"

"What's going on?" Oliver turns to his friend for an explanation, certain he's not going to like it.

"Everything was good when we got here," Tommy tells him sheepishly, kicking at invisible dirt on the ground. "Until...I might have been indelicate with my phrasing when I tried to explain..."

"...how you pawned off your ex on your best friend so you could bring your new fling along on your trip?" Laurel's eyes finally fall on Felicity, who squirms a little under her gaze, like she'd prefer to go back to being ignored.

"It's nice to meet you, Laurel," Felicity offers with her hand and jesus, this girl's going to give him diabetes with how sweet she is. "I'm…"

"I know who you are," Laurel snaps, looking at Felicity's outstretched arm like it's holding up a middle finger instead of a hand to shake, before turning back on Oliver. "A reporter Ollie, really? Haven't you ever heard of sleeping with the enemy?"

"No!" Felicity exclaims. "We're not, I mean we haven't...We just met."

Laurel looks at Oliver with something like angry incredulity. Somehow, this is worse?

"Ollie, you know she's the one that wrote that piece about us after season two right?" His ex fires this shot like she says her lines on the show sometimes, straight like a bullet, aiming to kill. "The one that questioned whether or not our off-screen relationship was affecting our on-screen chemistry? The one that nearly got us both fired?"

* * *

Felicity's stomach rolls as she recalls the article Laurel's referring to. It's the kind of speculation she's always hated indulging, but it had been demanded after a series of paparazzi photos surfaced revealing Oliver in less-than-platonic circumstances with Laurel's sister Sara, who worked on their show as a stunt woman. Laurel's stunt double, Felicity remembers ironically, thinking back on some pretty regrettable turns of phrase she had worked into the piece out of spite for having to write it at all. "Birds of a feather," and all that…

"I think maybe I should go," she says softly to Oliver, her heart sinking with the knowledge that she was right after all about this being too good to be true.

"No!" Oliver replies with enough force that she jumps a little. Laurel and Tommy seem less affected by his outburst, and he turns to them first.

"Listen, Laurel, you're coming right?" As Oliver speaks, Tommy's worried eyes dart between his best friend and the woman that's literally between them. "I mean, you wanted to come on this trip with Tommy, didn't you? Otherwise you wouldn't be here."

"I just thought, I didn't…" Laurel trails off, her voice and expression softening as she looks back at Tommy and Oliver breathes a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't wrong about that.

"Okay, so come with us, at least," Oliver says. "I promise, I'll explain everything and you can keep yelling at us on the plane."

"Best idea I've heard all day," Tommy says, leveling a meaningful look in his Oliver's direction as he grabs Laurel's hand and finally looks her in the eyes hopefully. "Please?"

She gives him a small, almost shy, nod, before letting out a sighed "okay." Felicity nearly misses it, preparing to deliver the monologue she's been rehearsing in her head since the moment she realized Laurel Lance was standing in the private airplane hanger.

"Listen Oliver," she starts, once Tommy and Laurel have boarded. "I don't want to get in the middle of anything here…"

"You're not..." he stops when her eyes narrow at him in disbelief. "I mean, you kind of are, but it's not what you think."

"Okay..." Felicity sees the look of surprise flash across his face, but it's nothing compared to the shock that shoots through her at her immediate willingness to hear him out. She should be moving onto the second phase of this plan: call a cab, go home and spend the weekend with some mint chip and some Netflix. Maybe write a blind item about her night with an unnamed TV superhero. (Probably not.)

But instead, she's listening to him explain.

"I told Tommy that he should bring Laurel along this weekend, because he's in love with her, and I think it's time he did something about it," he says, like it's a far simpler situation.

She's not sure what she was expecting, exactly, but it wasn't that. Which is why her next question is less meaningful than she'd like it to be, at least as far as it pertains to her involvement in this mess.

"Does she love him?"

"I think she might," he answers quickly, and she watches him close, but if there's any trace of regret on his face, she doesn't catch it.

"And so...where do I fit into all this?" Okay, that's better. Slightly closer to on track.

"You don't," he says honestly, only smiling wider when she frowns a little at his response. "Or, you didn't. Until today. But I think I'd like it if you did."

The look in his eyes finally stops her rational mind in its tracks, allowing him to continue.

"Listen, I know this is crazy and fast and kind of a mess," he tells her, chuckling a little. "But we're already here, right? And as long as you can't tell me that you don't feel this too…"

"I…" She can count the number of times she's seriously been at a loss for words on her fingers. It doesn't happen often.

"Just take a shot, Felicity," he's nearly pleading now, like she hasn't already made up her mind. "Get out of the city with me for a few days. I swear, if it's terrible, I'll get you on the first flight home."

"I don't know," she lets him dangle, for just a second, because she already loves how cute his worried face can get. "I might not be able to go back to flying commercial now."

He presses his forehead against hers then, just like he did outside the bar, but this time he just smiles, blinding her with his white teeth and hopeful eyes before grabbing her hand and leading her onto the jet.

"She's in the back room," Tommy tells Oliver when they've finally boarded, crooking his thumb towards the private bedroom in the back, into which Laurel has clearly disappeared. Felicity does her best not to gawk at the lavish wood-paneled interior of the first private jet she's ever been on. When in Rome, and all that.

"Just five minutes," Oliver turns to tell her, but she just nods dumbly, still taking it all in.

"Come on, Smoak," Tommy places a hand on her lower back as Oliver disappears into the back. "I'll introduce you to Pilot Pete and the lovely Christine, who makes the meanest martini you've even had."

"Sounds fantastic."

* * *

"What the hell, Laurel?" Oliver explodes the second he shuts the door behind them, because this is so not how he'd hoped to be making use of the jet's master bedroom. As much as he wants Laurel and Tommy to work things out, he had starting making plans the second Felicity agreed to come San Francisco with him, and none of those plans involved holing up in the back bedroom of the jet with his ex.

"Stole my line, Ollie," Laurel snaps. "Just like always."

"Look, can we not do this right now?" Oliver asks, nearly begging. "We're finally on hiatus, this is supposed to be a fun, relaxing trip."

"So you brought a reporter along?"

"She's not...she doesn't even work there anymore," he stammers in response to her sarcastic tone.

"As of when?"

"As of today." He winces a little, knowing how this is going to go over. "She told me she was quitting when we did our phoner earlier."

"Great, so you talked your way into her pants AND out of her job?" Laurel sneers. "Pretty impressive, Ollie, even for you. That is, if she's telling the truth."

"She is," Oliver says immediately, but the next part escapes him unbidden "I trust her."

"I'll bet you do," his ex says sarcastically, but he can tell that she's surprised at the weight of his words.

"Don't do that," he says, warning, understanding the weight that her tone adds to the meaning of her words. "It's not like that."

"Then what's it like, Oliie?"

"I don't know!"

He blows up a little, the pressure of emotional insecurity and this added complication pushing all of his emotions to the surface. It's a release he would only allow around a select group of people he could number on one hand. Two of them, maybe a third if he lets himself hope, are on this plane with him right now.

"I don't know, Laurel," he says again, softer this time. "Look, can we just talk about what you're actually upset about?"

"Which is?"

"I think you're scared of this thing with Tommy," he levels with her. "I think you're scared and I think you're worried that this is finally about to happen and it's not completely on your terms and I think you're mad at me for telling him pull the trigger without giving you a say."

It's sharper and way wordier than he means it to be, but the sentiment is the important part. The two of them have been dancing around each other for the last two years, probably longer than that, if Oliver's honest with himself. And it's past time everyone got their shit together.

* * *

"There's still time for me to leave, right?" Felicity asks, only half-kidding, when they sit down in the plush chairs that make up the seating in private cabin. When Tommy doesn't answer immediately because he's preoccupied with staring worriedly at the door to the private room, her runaway mouth continues. "I mean, they haven't even done the safety demonstration or anything yet."

"Yeah, they don't do that on private planes." Oliver's friend and publicist answers distractedly, before huffing out a loud breath and turning his full attention back to her. "You're not going anywhere, Smoak. First of all, Ollie would kill me..."

"I swear, I'm not here on a story or anything," Felicity interrupts him, still hung up on Laurel's mention of her article. "I didn't know she was going to be here. Hell, I didn't know I was going to be here until about 45 minutes ago."

"Yeah, it's been that kind of day," Tommy sighs. "Don't worry about Laurel, she's just extra wary around the press, what with being a legacy and all. She's practically grown up with reporters breathing down her neck. It tends to make you a little extra spikey about that kind of stuff."

Felicity softens, remembering that the group of them, Tommy, Laurel, Sara and Oliver and a few dozen others had been part of a group of "star kids," children of Hollywood that had the unfortunate timing to hit adolescence just as social media was coming into its prime. With all the issues of today's young celebs, but none of the online savvy, most of them, even the ones that kept themselves out of jail or rehab, were skewered by the press on the regular, she remembers uncomfortably.

"They've been back there a while," Felicity attempts to change the subject and take her mind off the fact that they've started to taxi with some forced levity. "You don't think they're back 'on' again, do you?"

It's a weak attempts at a joke, but Felicity realizes just how far over the line she's crossed when the smile drops completely from Tommy's face, and he blanches.

"I'm sorry," she covers quickly. "Oliver told me... but I didn't realize…"

"It's fine," he brushes her off. "That's what I get for falling for my best friend's girl, huh?"

"So you really do, huh?" Felicity asks, remembering what Oliver told her. "Love her, I mean. Not that it's my place...at all..."

"I think I've always loved her," Tommy interrupts, not really paying her any mind. His gaze is on the back door, but his mind's eye is somewhere else, with someone else.

"You should tell her that," she tells him, and that pulls Tommy's focus back to her, lustful eyes instantly turning unsure.

"You think so?"

"I really do," she tells him honestly. "_And_ I think you should really push Oliver to do that Anderson project. He'd be great for it, and vice versa."

"You're something else, aren't you Smoak?" Tommy says, considering her over the rim of his glass as he gleans the last drops of his martini.

"That's what my grandma used to say," she tells him wryly. "Though, she would have added a few more expletives."

"Ah, potty-mouthed grannies are my favorite kind," he grins like the Cheshire Cat before narrowing his eyes again. "_You_ should tell him to do the movie, you know. Something tells me he'd listen."

"I just met him," Felicity demurs, cheeks flushing against her will.

"Sure doesn't feel that way, though, does it?"

Tommy stands then, rudely leaving her brain to mull his words over as he charms another drink from Christine.

* * *

"I'm sorry I pulled this on you tonight." Oliver scrubs a hand over his head, letting out a sigh. "I don't know what's happening with Felicity, honestly. It's new. Like, really new."

Laurel scoffs a little at him, but it seems mostly good-natured, so he keeps digging.

"All I know is that she's not here because she's a reporter," he says. "She's here because I asked her to be. I want her here with me. Just like Tommy wants you here with him."

"He said you told him it was time to start getting serious," Laurel tells him, eyes widening to some emotion he hasn't really seen since they were teenagers.

"I did," he nods. "Is that what scared you?"

"Maybe."

He's never seen her look this vulnerable off-screen. Maybe she did, back when they were a couple, and he was too busy fucking things up to notice. Or maybe not, because the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes how big this thing between her and Tommy could be. Already is, truthfully.

"Listen Laurel, we both know he's one of the good ones," Oliver tells her on a sigh. "Maybe the best one, if we're being honest. And he loves you."

"I know," she answers, quietly. So he tells her again.

"He loves you, like I've never seen him love anything," he says, meeting her unsure eyes. "He's always there for you, always on your side. But he's been holding himself back, and that's partially my fault. So I told him to stop."

"Why?"

"I keep having dreams about that scene in the finale," he confesses, and she nods a little in recognition. "There's a long moment after, as he's falling, when he thinks about all the people who are important to him in his life. But in the dream, it's me. I'm dying and it's my people and all I can see are the things I've done wrong. All the ways I've hurt those people."

"I never asked you to torture yourself, Ollie," Laurel says, soft eyes betraying the sharpness in her tone. "Nobody did."

"I deserve worse," he tells her before reigning the darkness back. "But you and Tommy, the two of you deserve so much better."

"With each other?"

"Maybe," he tells her. "If that's what you want. All I'm asking is that you give him a chance, Laurel. Hear him out, let him show you who he is when he's not worried about the other shoe dropping."

* * *

"What's the second thing?" Felicity asks Tommy when he sits down again, full martini sloshing in his hand.

"Huh?"

"You said first of all, Oliver would kill you if I left. What's the second of all?"

Tommy studies her for a minute, and his cool appraisal is her first clue that the rumors might also be a little off about Oliver Queen's best friend. Sure he's a playboy, a fast talker, a PR tornado, but something tells her that this guy runs a lot deeper than anyone knows.

"I don't know if you remember, about two years back," he starts, still studying her even though his eyes have gone a little glassy. "There was an accident."

She hadn't put it together, actually, but the second he says it, all the puzzle pieces snap in her mind. A stunt on their show had gone wrong. Not fatal, but bad enough, and one of those accidents that could have been a lot worse, but for a few inches of wire and a lucky landing. Production had to be shut down for a week or two while everyone regrouped. _Sara_, Felicity remembers. It was Sara Lance that had gotten hurt.

"It wasn't his fault, it wasn't even close to being his fault," Tommy tells her. "But he got it in his head that it was because of him and Sara. Karma, or something more, like if he hadn't been...distracting her, it never would have happened."

"That's crazy," she says with a voice that's shaking more than she's giving it permission to.

"That's Ollie," Tommy tells her. "And since then…"

He trails off and Felicity has to remind herself to breathe.

"Since then it's like he's been atoning for something." Tommy studies the ice in his glass. "He's more serious, but it's more than that. It's like he's shut down, like he's afraid of what might happen to the next person he lets in."

"He doesn't…" Felicity starts, but her brain is spinning with more than just the altitude and her fading wine buzz. "It didn't seem to me like…"

"Like I said, Smoak," Tommy raises his glass in her direction. "You're something else."

She takes a shaky breath as the big picture of Oliver Queen comes into even sharper focus.

"Do you think he still loves her?"

It's the question she knows they both need the answer to, and she's just short of thankful when Tommy dodges it like a pro.

"I don't think he ever loved Sara."

"Not Sara." She gulps down a deep breath, glancing over her shoulder towards the back of the plane.

"He's been telling me he doesn't, says he hasn't for years," Tommy admits, with a vulnerable look that makes him look like the teenager she used to see in the tabloids. "Today is the first day I think I actually let myself believe him."

"How come?"

"Apparently, he had some kind of epiphany when they were filming the finale," Tommy scoffs. "And then of course, there's the way he looks at you."

And all of a sudden it's too much.

"I need some air."

Felicity stands from her seat and is mildly shocked when nothing dings and no one stops her, belatedly remembering, _oh right, private plane_.

"Plenty of that up here, Smoak."

"I think I might be having a panic attack," she says, mostly to herself, the words spill out of her mouth as she paces down the aisle. "What's that feel like? Sort of like you're being attacked by panic, right?"

* * *

Oliver's stomach drops when he opens the door from the back room and doesn't see Felicity sitting in the cabin. Once again, Tommy crooks his thumb at him, raising an eyebrow and motioning towards the jet's bathroom. A wave of relief crashes over him, but it ends up being just a mouthful of sand, as Tommy shakes his head.

"No, buddy, you should..."

Oliver grimaces, but crosses to the door and knocks anyway.

"Felicity?"

She opens the door, and his heart twists at how young she looks with her wide worried eyes and flushed cheeks. When she makes no moves to step out, he pushes past her into the cramped space. It's bigger than a commercial airplane bathroom, sure, but they're still pressed pretty close and even with her in heels, he has to tilt his chin down awkwardly to meet her eyes.

"You know," he smiles, "this is probably your worst attempt at running away so far."

"Well it's not my fault there's nowhere to go on this stupid jet!" She feigns exasperation, but he can still see a little panic on her face. He opts to just rip the Band-Aid off.

"Look, I'm sorry I took so long with Laurel," he tells her. "But I think I talked her down a little bit. Can we just go back out there and try to get back to normal?"

"Normal?!"

She spits the word at him likes it's a vulgarity, eyes going even wider if that's possible.

"There's nothing normal about this, Oliver." Her hands move quickly with her words, brushing against his chest every so often, and she barely glances up at him as she rants. "We've crossed over into some crazy bizarro universe where I jump on planes with a bunch of TV stars who are all in love with each other!"

"Hey now," Oliver stops her. "Tommy is no TV star."

"You're really making jokes right now?"

"I'm sorry," he says, sobering.

"I don't know what we're doing here, Oliver," she says softly. "I know what you must think of my line of work, but I prided myself on being a good writer and a professional. And then today, not only did I burn that to the ground, I literally bolted. I left town with someone who's not only a celebrity, but also basically a stranger. And I just, I don't know. Because no matter what I feel, no matter what you make me feel, at the end of the day, I'm still just Felicity Smoak. And you're still Oliver Queen."

He winces, both at the mention of his full name and the implications she gives it. But he presses on, in the name of honesty. He wants her, sure, but only on her terms. And that means full disclosure.

"I don't have a good answer for you, Felicity, this isn't really a typical first date for me," he tells her truthfully. "In fact, I haven't had a first date in a while. Not since…"

"Sara?"

He nods solemnly, unsurprised. Either Tommy told her or she'd figured it out. Neither would shock him.

"I still go out with Tommy sometimes, to keep up appearances, but there hasn't been anyone, no one that…"

He trails off, watching her watch him. He could be imagining it, but he swears there's hope behind all that wariness.

"Then I heard your voice on the phone today and it was like a switch flipped inside me," he smiles, recalling their first conversation like it was a whole lifetime ago. "There was just something about you."

"Yeah, I was faking my way through the world's worst interview," she says with an adorable dopey chuckle.

"The best interview I've ever had," he corrects her, and he'd go through all of this again to see her eyes sparkle like they do then. "And when you ran out of that bar tonight, I just, I didn't want to let you get away…"

She gets a faraway look in her eyes and a little frown that confuses him.

"What?"

* * *

"Nothing, I'm just mentally going through four seasons of dialogue to see if I owe your writing staff a thank you for any of that."

"Nope," he says proudly, grinning at her in that unfair way of his. "That was all me."

"Impressive." She smiles back because he looks so pleased with himself and that furrow between his eyebrows is finally gone for the first time since they got out of the car. "Maybe you should ask Tommy to see if that warrants a spot in the WGA."

"That good huh?"

"Pretty good."

He takes her hands in his and leans down to kiss her lightly, smiling against her mouth as she hums in contentment. It's simple and chaste, but she clutches his hands when he tries to pull back and pecks him once, twice more, like she just can't stop herself.

"I don't know what this is either, Felicity," he admits breathlessly. "All I know is that right now, I want to be with you. I want to spend time with you, away from all the LA crap. I want to take you out on Tommy's boat and go to AT&amp;T Park and watch your face light up as Team Pretty Faces finishes out a victorious week."

"Oh no, there are no Giants on Team Pretty Faces," Felicity tells him, making her most serious face in an attempt to betray the fact that her insides just turned to goo. "We weren't allowed to draft any, Andy's a massive Dodgers fan."

"Well then, we're in luck," he tells her, and her eyes sharpen at the bait. "Because the Dodgers are in town and guess who's pitching tomorrow?"

"Clayton Kershaw?" she asks hopefully, letting out a sigh when he nods in the affirmative. "The prettiest face of them all."

He drops another kiss on her lips, but this one feels a little possessive.

"Now now, don't be jealous of the super handsome three-time Cy Young winner."

"Not jealous," he smiles against her lips. "You're talking to a two-time Teen Choice Award nominee here."

* * *

She giggles at that and kisses him a few more times just for good measure.

He's happy to finally see smiles on Laurel and Tommy's faces when they emerge from the back bedroom, and only the tiniest bit surprised to see a smudge of pink lipstick on the corner of Tommy's mouth. His shoulder relax at the sight of them and Felicity blows his mind yet again when she rubs a hand across his upper back like she noticed somehow.

"Felicity," Laurel starts with a deep breath as she and Tommy take the seats across from them. "I think I owe you an apology."

"Not necessary," Felicity waves her off with a kind smile. "It seems like we've all had kind of a crazy day. Let's just chalk it up to whiplash."

Laurel grins at her gratefully, and so does Oliver when he catches her eye before she turns back to his ex.

"Just for the record, I have written more good pieces than bad about you guys," she continues, "I mean, I guess 'good' is subjective, but favorable, anyway. I actually just wrote a piece this month about female characters in comic adaptations and how exciting it is that you're going to be suiting up next season."

"I remember that," Laurel admits. "I loved that one, actually. That was you?"

"Yeah well, mostly," Felicity looks down at her hands just briefly, pursing her lips. "We've had some uh, byline issues over the last few months. It's actually one of the reasons I left."

It's been a drama-filled trip so far, but Oliver makes a mental note to push her harder about that later. Because, for all the confessions of the day, she's still got cards that she's holding close to the chest and the newfound desire to make sure nothing makes Felicity unhappy, ever, is beginning to consume him.

"Anyway, it's about time, right?"

Oliver can't tell if she's talking about Laurel or the show or what's happening between any of them right now, but he's inclined to agree, and when Laurel and Tommy look at each other blissfully, he feels grateful and content and a couple other warm and fuzzy things all at the same time.

He laces his fingers through hers, grinning all the while and when he presses a kiss to the back of her hand, the warmth in her eyes distracts him so much that it barely even registers when Pilot Pete pokes his head out from the cockpit to give them a friendly warning about some turbulence as they begin their initial descent into San Francisco.

* * *

_A/N: So, we finally made it to San Fran! Next up, sight-seeing and sleeping arrangements! Keep the comments coming, they're seriously so awesome and helpful, as I'm kind of flying blind with each chapter, and just hoping people like it. Everyone's been so awesome so far, I can't thank you enough! #ThisFandomISTG_


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Sorry for the wait! These chapters keep getting longer without my permission. I was literally giddy writing this one though, and I hope it reads the same. I also want to make sure and clarify that, for the purposes of this fic, Laurel is not and has never been an alcoholic or an addict. I don't want to belittle that character detail but it just doesn't fit in this story, hope that's okay._

_BASEBALL-RELATED A/N: I know there's at least one Giants fan out there who is reading or has read this series, and I was going to apologize for this chapter. But I'm not sorry. Not even a little bit. You guys have embarrassed us so much already this season, and I am righting a wrong in the real-life canon of the NL West with this chapter. #GODOYERS_

**I'm a Slave to the Wires Ch. 4**

"Felicity, what the hell?!" Iris may have been speechless not an hour and a half ago, but she has certainly found her voice when Felicity calls her after they touch down. "Why haven't you called me back?!"

"Jeez, Iris, take it down a notch," Felicity holds the phone away from her ear and catches Oliver toss her a little grin. "I was on a damn plane, okay? What's going on?"

"A plane? I thought you were going to San Francisco."

"I was...we are, in San Francisco," she says, shaking her head. "We took Tommy's jet. Well, the Merlyn Global jet."

"_You just took a private jet to San Francisco with Oliver Queen?!"_

"Yeah, Iris, you don't have to yell. There's a big neon sign in my head blinking those exact words at me."

She finally talks her roommate down enough so that Iris will let her off the phone with a promise to talk more tomorrow and turns back to the group with an apologetic smile.

"Everything okay?" Oliver asks ask they climb into the back seat of the big black Suburban that Tommy seems way too excited to drive for the weekend.

"Everything's great." She smiles at him and leans her head up against his shoulder, ready for their next adventure.

* * *

They gather in the breakfast nook of the enormous Merlyn kitchen after the car has been unloaded for a celebratory nightcap. Laurel's leaning up against Tommy and Oliver's got his arm slung across the back of Felicity's chair and he's suddenly struck with the thought that this could be it, the four of them, for years to come. He keeps having thoughts like that, like nostalgia for the future, if that's a thing? He's not sure. It's an idea of the potential happiness though, what could be if he doesn't screw it up, that nearly makes him ache.

"Prochnost!" Tommy calls gleefully, pouring another round and holding up his glass, which makes Laurel roll her eyes and Felicity furrow her brow.

"What does that mean?"

"That's Tommy's way of reminding me that I once listed a Russian accent on my resume," Oliver explains, throwing his shot back. "And I should not have done that, apparently."

"I still remember the call from that casting director," his friend wheezes through a fit of giggles. "'_You think this is some kind of joke, Merlyn? I'll never see any of your clients again!_'"

"Yeah, thanks for that one Ollie," Laurel jabs with a smile.

Felicity laughs along with them, but it's cut off by a yawn and frankly, Oliver can't blame her.

"Smoak's right," Tommy agrees, collecting their glasses and tossing Oliver a look like he's read his mind. "We should turn in. Big day tomorrow."

"Big day?" Laurel asks him.

"Baseball by the bay, my dear!" Tommy says, offering a hand to help her up. "And plenty of other shenanigans."

"We're really going to the game?" Felicity looks at Oliver with delighted surprise and he just smiles and nods at her dumbly, wondering if wanting to kiss her all the goddamn time is going to start presenting some logistical problems in his life.

"Okay, so Laurel and I will be in 7...and 8," Tommy calculates, oblivious to his friend's internal struggle. "Ollie, you and Felicity can stay up in 18 and 19?"

"Sounds good," Oliver nods and moves to grab Felicity's bag as she shoots him a confused look.

"19?"

"When Tommy and I were little, we used run around counting the rooms in this place," he explains. "We numbered them all the way up to the top, and it just kind of stuck."

"Number 19's the loft," Tommy tells her with a smile. "Best view in the house for the guest of honor."

Despite her protests, Oliver insists on being a gentleman and carrying Felicity's suitcase up the two flights of stairs to their adjacent rooms. He makes sure to point out that the door that leads to the stairs up to the lofted attic where she's sleeping is right next to the bedroom where he'll be. He might mention it twice, for good measure.

"Good." She clears her throat and giving him a slightly embarrassed smile. "Good to know."

"Good night, Felicity," he says, pressing a kiss to her cheek that might linger just a bit too long.

"Good night, Oliver."

* * *

She's only had a few minutes to open up her suitcase and take in #19, which is the billionaire's equivalent of a furnished attic, _the place even has a full bath for pete's sake_, when there's a knock on her door. She knows it's him and calls out for him to come in before she has a chance second-guess herself. It's not lost on her that this is the second time Oliver Queen has knocked on her bedroom door and it's definitely not lost how much that sentence still sounds like a dream or a middle school journal entry in her head.

What does confound her is how glad she is to hear him knock. Because somehow, in the ten minutes since she came up, took in the incredible view of the bay and started unpacking, she found the time to miss him. It's a crazy thought, and she turns back to the giant window that takes up most of one wall as he climbs the stairs, taking a moment to collect herself as much as humanly possible.

"Some view, huh?"

She stays facing the glass, watching him walk towards her in the reflection, waiting until he's closer before she turns and answers.

"It really is," she sighs, taking in the double meaning at the sight of him in a well-worn t-shirt and sweatpants. The man can certainly rock some casual wear.

"You know, Felicity, there's no dress code for the guest of honor," he grins at her, apparently noticing her utter _lack_ of casual wear. She accessorizes the skirt set she's still wearing from work with a full body blush under the weight of his gaze. "You're allowed to put on some PJs."

"I don't have any!" She blurts it out loud, stopping just short of slapping her own forehead in embarrassment.

"You what?" He's looking at her, raising his eyebrows and chuckling a little like she's a small child, which judging by the state of her suitcase, might not be too far off. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I don't know if you remember, I packed kind of last minute," she blurts out defensively. "And then _somebody_ distracted me."

"Distracted, huh?"

Oliver takes another step closer and Felicity wonders if the way someone raises their eyebrows is allowed to be sexy? Because, um, yeah.

"Yes, I was distracted," she reiterates, ignoring the way her voice shakes a little. "So all I packed, and I mean literally, all I packed, is fancy stuff."

"Fancy stuff?"

"No PJs, no t-shirts, no socks, nothing. Basically all I have are a few dresses, some really skinny skinny jeans, and a couple pairs of heels, none of which I can sleep in."

She sees his eyes flare at the mention of her shoes, but her embarrassment is kind of overriding everything else at the moment, and the meaning is lost until he mumbles and turns for the stairs.

"Hang on just a sec."

He returns a moment later, with a handful of clothes, and only then does she feel the shift, like the atmosphere in the room has changed. He's looking at her differently somehow, she can feel his gaze crackle across her skin like static electricity.

"This will probably work," he tosses the shirt aside on the bed and holds up a pair of basketball shorts. "But these might be a little big."

He pinches the waistband of the shorts between his thumbs and forefingers and holds them up to her, wrapping his free fingers gently around her hips and she has to remind herself to breathe.

"What a move!" she huffs out a little laugh when she finds her voice, looking up and catching her breath again when she realizes just how close his face is to hers. "That's kind of old school."

"Did it work?" he smiles. "I was planning to ask next if you wanted to slip into something more comfortable."

"Very old school," she muses, returning his grin as he leans in closer. "But yes. I mean, the answer is definitely yes."

"Yeah?"

She mumbles a little "mhmm" against his lips and feels the shorts drop on her feet as his hands span her waist properly. This is the fourth proper time she's kissed him now, and each time keeps ratcheting up in intensity, so much so that this one is lips and tongue and little nips of teeth almost immediately. Her back's against the cold glass of the window before she even realizes what's happening and she's hit with two thoughts at once, the first of which is that he really likes pressing her up against stuff.

The second thought, though, is the one that makes her stomach drop.

* * *

"Shit, Oliver, hold on." She says the words, but her lips keep finding his over and over again, pressing little pecks for a few more seconds before she actually pulls away.

"What?"

"I'm sorry..." she starts and he doesn't know why she's apologizing, but he doesn't really care that much, huffing out "It's okay" before moving back in.

But she stops him with two hands firm against his chest and he shakes his head to clear it, trying to figure out what's going on.

"No, I'm sorry, I'm uh…" She's mumbling now, eyes looking anywhere but his and he thinks she looks small and a little frightened and it's even worse because he doesn't know why.

"I'm not going to sleep with you," she says finally, spitting the words out in one big jumble like they taste bad in her mouth. There it is. "I mean, not tonight. Not, not ever, because I mean, come on...But not tonight. Maybe not this weekend?"

"Okay…"

"And I'm sorry, if you thought..." she keeps going, like she's got something to explain, and he lets go of her waist and takes a step back, wondering, not for the first time, what happened to this confident and beautiful woman in front of him that turned her so skittish. He thinks it can't just be him, can't just be the "Oliver Queen" persona, because she gives as good as she gets when they banter. So if it's not him she's intimidated by...

"Well, I don't know what you thought, but you probably came up here with something in mind. I mean you're obviously interested, I could feel..."

"Felicity, _stop_," he's nearly begging because it's fine, really it is, but if they're not going to, then she needs to stop talking about it. "It's okay, really."

"Yeah?" She looks so relieved his heart swells and breaks all at once.

"Yes," he laughs a little in disbelief, trying his hardest to make it clear that it's not directed at her. "I'm not...I mean I wasn't expecting…"

"You weren't?"

"No," he protests. "I mean, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thinking about it, but I swear, the only reason I came up here was to make sure you had everything you need...and to tell you goodnight."

"You told me goodnight downstairs, though." She crooks an eyebrow at him skeptically and he's thankful, at least, that her confidence is back.

"I did," he admits. "But that was before I knew you didn't even have proper pajamas. Now I've got to do it all over again."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes," he smiles. "So you better get changed."

He watches her, heart thumping in his chest as she picks the shorts up off the floor and crosses over to the bed. His jaw nearly aches from all the grinning he's done today and he doesn't care one bit.

"Um, Oliver? I don't think this is going to work."

She holds up the tank top he brought, which is at least three sizes too big for her and cut low enough that it definitely won't cover anything important.

"Huh, you're right," he observes casually. "Yeah, that's not going to help matters. Here, I'll trade you."

He pulls his t-shirt over his head to give to her and when he can see her again, she's frozen, lips open on a silent "o," and his tank top is on the ground even though her hands are outstretched, like she's still holding it.

"Wow," she stutters out, eyes locked on his torso. "I mean, uh, wow."

"Oh yeah," he remembers, looking down before shooting her a cocky smile. "Still got that finale body. You like?"

She makes a sound he thinks is "yeah-huh" and he might overdo the flexing a little when he reaches down to pick the tank top off the floor, but who's complaining?

He moves to put the tank on, but stops himself, raising an eyebrow at her. "Unless?"

"Yeah, yeah, you can, you should leave that...off…" she stammers. "Just leave it...there, leave it on the ground."

"And you're absolutely sure you don't want a piece of this?" he teases and if it's possible, she blushes even deeper and it's adorable and so much better than when she looked scared.

"I mean, I…"

"Felicity, I'm kidding," he insists. "Really."

"Okay then," she says, meeting his eyes for the first time since he took his shirt off before shaking her head and clearing her throat a little. "Turn around."

"What?"

"Turn around," she insists. "I have to change."

"Felicity, I'm shirtless here."

"Yes, you certainly are," she says, giving him another long, appraising look. "Now turn around."

He holds up his hands in surrender, turning obediently to face the window.

"You know, I can still see you in the reflection."

"Well then avert your eyes, or close them, or something," she says, all bossy, and he likes it. "Jeez, Queen, be a gentleman."

He watches her in the window anyway, and when he catches a glimpse of his grinning face in the reflection, he doesn't look guilty at all. In fact he looks as happy as he's ever seen himself.

* * *

"You know, I always thought they did all those scars with makeup," she observes absently as she pulls his t-shirt over her head. Her knees nearly buckle at the scent of him all around her, at the intimacy of having the soft material his shirt against her bare breasts, and she's so distracted, she totally misses his reaction at first.

"Nope, no prosthetics necessary," she hears him mumble, and when she turns to face him, she notices he's dropped his head to his chest. "These are the kind of scars you put on a resume."

"Oh god," she realizes about a minute too late. She can sort of see his face in the window's reflection and she'd swear his eyes are screwed shut. "Oliver, I'm so sorry. My stupid mouth, I…"

"It's fine, Felicity."

He hasn't turned back around, and maybe it's because she didn't tell him he could and maybe it's because he doesn't want to now. She hopes that it's the first one, but decides to chance it either way, stepping up behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist, mumbling into the taut skin and hard muscle of his back.

"It's not. And I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to...and you probably don't want to..."

"My dad and I were out on his boat one day," he starts, and she can tell he's told this story a hundred times before, so she holds him a little tighter and he wraps his own arms over hers, squeezing gently. It's a easier to hold him this way, without the intensity of eye contact and the full weight of the attraction that pulsates between them. She wonders if it's easier for him, too.

"We had a great day," he continues softly, almost whispering and she has to strain to hear him with one side of her face pressed against his back. "We caught some fish, we had some beers, he wasn't on my case about anything, we just...it was perfect. And then on the way home, some drunk asshole T-boned us. Just like that."

"I'm so sorry." She feels a little stupid repeating herself, but most of her vocabulary has abandoned her in the emotional wake of the night and the feeling of his skin, hot against hers.

"It's okay," he says again. "Everybody loses somebody, you know? And it's actually what made me move out here, to live with Tommy and give LA a shot."

He clears his throat and lifts his head a little, and the next sentence comes out sharper, but still heavy with meaning.

"It's hard to believe, but it's what led me to everything I have now."

It feels like he's talking about more than his job, but she doesn't have much time to dwell on the thought because he lifts one of his arms to pull her in front of him, eyes widening at the sight of her in his clothes. He stares for long enough that the tightness in her chest melts into confusion and discomfort, because she can't really read his face,is pupils are blown black but his brow is furrowed and his mouth is set in a straight line.

"What?"

"Nothing," he covers quickly, expression softening. "Nothing, I'm just...I'm really going to miss that shirt."

At her confused look, he continues, "I mean, it's so clearly yours now, I just wish I had a chance to say goodbye, you know, wear it one last..."

She cuts him off, pressing her lips to his because he's so sweet, even when she's made him sad, and she feels….something for him that almost makes her brain complete a really scary sentence. The scariest sentence, if she's being honest.

"You know," he pants a little when they have to come up for air, "I didn't just come up here to say goodnight."

"No?" She can't help but nip at his lower lip, but she really tries to hold herself back, sensing somehow that she's going to want to hear what he has to say.

"No," he admits, eyes dropping down before meeting hers again. "I just, this is going to sound crazy, but I...I missed you? I mean, I wasn't...it was like ten minutes, but I..."

"It doesn't sound crazy," she interrupts. "It doesn't. I...I missed you, too."

"Good." He says the word on an exhale and presses his forehead against hers and she can feel his eyelashes flutter against her own.

"Will you stay?" she asks with her eyes still closed, knowing it might a little sadistic to want him to sleep with her when she just told him she's not going to _sleep with him_, but unable to stop herself.

"Yeah," he answers, and she opens her eyes just in time to see his shoulders sag in what looks like relief. "Yeah, I'll stay."

* * *

"So no sex, huh?" he teases as they crawl into bed. "This is like an old-fashioned slumber party."

He's still feeling rubbed raw by their little confessional, but he aims for levity, worried he might scare her back onto the side of caution if he just comes right out and says what he wants, which is that the sight of her in his t-shirt nearly makes him forget that bad things happen in this world.

"You had slumber parties?" She's back to teasing him and he's so grateful and more than a little amazed at how easily they can move between emotional highs and lows, keeping up with each other, like their brains, or their hearts, are totally in sync.

"Don't you laugh at me, Smoak," he warns with a smile. "Tommy and I had our share of fairly killer slumber parties back in the day."

"I'll bet you did," she concedes, pulling up the covers and turning on her side to face him. "Did any of them involved make out sessions though, that's the real question."

"Come on, you know a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell," he says with a grin and a jump of his eyebrows that makes her laugh out loud.

"I feel like we should be playing truth or dare."

"Okay, truth," he counters, laying his head down level to hers. "Tell me what happened with your job."

"What? I don't...that is not how the game works."

"No, it's not. But you can if you want to," he tells her honestly. "Besides, I showed you mine. Literally."

"I don't know," her tone is still teasing and he can tell she's trying to change the subject. "Don't you want to wait until you sleep with me before you decide if you want to know my deep, dark secrets?"

He just shakes his head at her again, trying to look offended, even though he's starting to realize just how badly he wants both of those things, all of those things. He wants to know every part of her, from her deepest secret to the way she looks spread out underneath him. But he keeps that to himself for now.

"I think you have that backwards."

"I don't know…"

"Felicity."

"Okay, fine. So three, four years, ago," she begins, "Jeez, has it been that long already? Anyway...I was working for this independent site that specialized in all kinds of superhero stuff. Comics, adaptations, fan events, cons, you name it. We started doing really well, actually right around the time you guys premiered, that year there was like, a new comic show on every channel?"

He nods, remembering headlines that pitted them against countless other shows, wondering aloud where the "hero tipping point" would be, who'd be the first to drop, whether they were destined for mediocre fan service, and all before the pilot had even premiered.

"So we hit our high-water mark, traffic-wise, and when we got bought out, the managing editor, Ray Palmer, brought me along to the new gig. Only me," she says, pressing her lips together. "I thought at first it was because he thought I was smart or talented or valuable, professionally. I thought that...for a while, and I was so proud, until the moment he saw me kissing another guy and I realized it was about something else entirely."

"He saw you kissing another guy...at work?" Oliver tries not to sound too judgmental, but there's a little bit of jealousy shining through too and overall, it's not a tone he's super proud of.

"At the holiday party," she clarifies, waving it off. "There was mistletoe, it was nothing, a little peck. Barry's just a friend and anyway, he was, and still is, hopelessly in love with my roommate."

"Iris?"

"The very same," she tells him with a smile that drops off her face quickly as she continues. "Anyway, things changed after that. Ray started to punish me, sort of? Just small stuff here and there at first, taking me off shows and projects he knew I cared about. Most of the time, he'd actually give them to Barry, knowing that we were still friends, knowing I'd just have to be happy for him."

"Sounds like a scumbag," Oliver growls, wishing he had his character's arsenal of weapons and this idiot's home address.

"He started giving me fluffy, nothing assignments. Big pieces, so I couldn't really complain, but stuff he knew I'd hate. And then...as some kind of twisted lesson about messing around with coworkers, he made me write that article about you and Laurel and...Sara."

He sucks in a breath at that, both at her knowledge of the past he isn't proud of and the realization that they had been linked, in such a strange way, before he even knew who she was.

"He made me feel small," she continues softly, looking away. "He took away things that were important to me and he made me feel like I was less talented that I know myself to be. And I let him and I believed him, and the only thing worse than that is how long I stayed."

"Felicity," he sighs when she's said her part, trying to keep his voice soft, trying to keep the mixture of fury and heartbreak out of his tone. "You know that's harassment, right? That's, I mean...he's not allowed to do that."

"Yes, I'm not an idiot" she snaps at him a little. "But it's always fuzzier than it is the HR video, you know? Wait...do you know? Do actors ever have to watch that video? That makes a lot of sense, actually…"

"Felicity." She's lost in a babble and he knows it's partly out of self-preservation,

"It was a good job, Oliver, a writing job with benefits, which is like winning the damn lottery. It was totally ridiculous sometimes, a lot of the time, but it's so much better than what I was doing."

"Yeah but, what do actually you want to do?"

"I was good at it, too," she continues, only half-hearing him. "Even if I wasn't happy, I was at least proud of that."

"But what do you want?"

"That's immaterial," she insists with a shakes of her head, hazarding a sharp glance at him. "What I want requires another job that pays the bills."

"What do you want, Felicity?"

She sighs with a little eye roll, before scooting closer, finally raising her hooded gaze back to him, and he knows her moment of confession is over. Maybe it's his fault for pushing.

"I want you to kiss me again."

She's deflecting again, but it's late and jesus, it's only their first night together, even if it feels like he's known her for years. So he lets her deflect. And he gives her what she wants.

He kisses her soft and sweet and languid, banding an arm around her waist as one of her hands comes up to scratch against the stubble on his cheek. It's no less passionate that any of the kisses they've shared so far, but it's slow and sleepy and just bordering on sloppy when he realizes with disappointment that they're both dozing off.

"Felicity," he mumbles, tucking her even tighter against his chest, figuring now's as good a time as any.

"Yeah?"

"Does this count as sleeping with you? Because I'm pretty sure I want to know all of your deep, dark secrets."

She's quiet for a long time after that and he's sure that she's fallen asleep, a little relieved, if he's honest with himself. But then he feels her lips press against his chest and he knows he's a total goner.

He doesn't want to spook her though, so he makes certain to be gone before the sun comes up.

* * *

Felicity's equal parts disappointed and relieved when she wakes to an empty bed. Okay, maybe not equal parts, but she's not entirely sorry that her second day with Oliver Queen won't begin with bedhead and morning breath.

She blearily checks her phone to find a string of frantic texts from Iris, mostly just ridiculous, emphatic emoji, and one from Oliver.

_Tommy has jerseys for everybody for the game_, his message reads. _I tossed yours up the stairs._

She breathes a tiny sigh of relief, figuring the jersey plus her jeans and least fancy heels will be perfectly appropriate attire for the afternoon game. That is, until they step into the Merlyn Global box at AT&amp;T Park.

"Pretty sweet, right?" Tommy says proudly, waving an arm around. "We've got one at Dodger Stadium too, of course, but this one is great for the playoffs."

It is sweet, she admits internally, if a little sterile. Two-thirds of the people in the box are watching either their phones or the TVs instead of the field and half of the men are wearing suits like this is a business event. She realizes, belatedly, that it kind of is. Tommy and Laurel spend most of their time schmoozing with industry big shots and some Silicon Valley guys Tommy all seems to know by one frat house nickname or another.

Oliver's sweet and attentive, but he does get dragged into the conversations every now and then, and she distracts herself by checking her phone, looking at fantasy updates, Instagram, and Twitter, anything but her work email. She feels driftless, and more than a little out of place among this crowd and when her mind wanders, she starts to think about how much the past few years of her life have been defined by her work.

The thought sends her into a bit of an existential spiral, so much so that she's barely even able to enjoy Kershaw's dominant performance or Joc Pederson's two-run homer that accounts for the only hits on the board. Fantasy baseball championships don't come with benefits, she realizes with a grimace.

She's itching in her seat by the seventh inning stretch, and gets up to grab another drink from the wet bar. No plastic cups of cheap beer up here, which is actually kind of a shame, if she's honest. But before she can even really sense him behind her, he's whispering in her ear, nearly making her drop her glass.

"You want to get out of here?"

"Oliver!" She tries her best not to sound totally scandalized, but it's not an easy feat when she can feel his stubble brush against the shell of her ear. "What are you talking about?"

"Just, come on." He grabs the glass from her, setting it down on the bar and lacing his fingers through hers. "Trust me?"

He's already pulling her towards the door, but the answer's still yes.

* * *

"Oliver!" she nearly squeals as he leads her to the field level section on the third base side. "We need tickets to be down here!"

"Oh no, we do?" He widens his eyes at her in mock horror, before holding his phone up for the usher to scan, and she slaps his arm for teasing her.

"Thea did me a little favor," he confesses with a shrug.

"Aren't they going to miss you back there?"

"Eh, they'll be fine," he brushes off. "Let Tommy deal with the shop talk, he's the one that likes it. Besides, I'm the talent. I'm supposed to be volatile and impulsive."

An error gives Kershaw his first baserunner in the bottom of the eighth and the Giants fans that remain in the stands erupt around them, tossing a few obscenities at their Dodger blue.

"Shoot," Felicity mumbles. "No perfect game. He can still get the shutout, though."

"And the complete game," Oliver reminds her, "if he finishes out the ninth. You should call Andy."

Her eyes light up with mischief and he suddenly sees them on a little girl with blonde pigtails and his crooked smile. The image hits him sideways, shocking him into silence until he hears a voice shouting at her through the speakerphone.

"SMOAK, DON'T EVEN TELL ME YOU CALLED TO BRAG RIGHT NOW!"

"I did!" she tells Andy gleefully. "But not for the reason you think. Guess who's sitting on the third-base line at AT&amp;T right now?"

The shouting erupts into a string of profanity that makes him check around them for small children before the line clicks off.

"He's very happy for me," she deadpans, sliding her phone back in her pocket.

Casilla makes quick work of the Dodgers up at the top of the ninth, which makes Oliver frown, but when Kershaw comes out to start the bottom of the inning, Felicity grabs his hand and laces her fingers through his and he couldn't even turn his mouth down if he tried.

She uses her free hand to turn her cap backwards as the lanky pitcher warms up and he crooks his eyebrow at her because somehow, she's gotten even more adorable.

"Rally cap," she whispers to him conspiratorially. "Plus, if he wins, I'm totally going to kiss you, and it'll be easier without the brim in the way."

He turns his hat around too, just for good luck.

Kershaw gets through the first two batters easily, both pop out on a pitch or two. But the third guy lingers.

"Fuckin' Hunter Pence," he mutters under his breath, grimace turning to a grin when he hears her echo.

"Fuckin' Hunter Pence."

The Giants outfielder whiffs at one and then two pitches in a row and her hand tightens around his each time. He's never wished for a K so hard in his life.

When Kershaw finally gets him on a swing and a miss, Felicity leaps to her feet on a cheer, pulling him up with her. As promised, she jumps into his arms and presses her lips to his and the tiniest part of his brain that isn't focused on the way her ass feels in his hands or the way her tongue is teasing him thinks there must have been more L.A. fans at the game than he realized. Because that's a lot of cheering.

* * *

"There you are!" Tommy calls out when they make their way back to the box as the crowd files out of the stadium. "What a game!"

"It really was," Oliver says, smiling down at her.

"Where'd you two disappear to?" Tommy asks saucily, raising his eyebrows nearly to his hairline, before letting them off the hook with a wave of his hand. "Never mind, let's hit the town!"

"First rounds on Felicity," Oliver agrees, dodging the look she shoots him with a playful grin. "She just made a killing off Kershaw."

The rest of the night is fun, enough so that it wipes away any trace of her earlier existential funk. His friends have warmed to her enough to let their respective guards down, and the feeling is mutual. It's just the four of them, without the pretense of their last names or the smoggy weight of professional importance that hovers over life in Los Angeles and had clouded her happiness in the box. Laurel's kind and Tommy's hilarious and Oliver is...everything, in a heavy way that she knows she's actually going to have to deal with soon.

They have dinner in Chinatown and drinks at a couple bars that Tommy and Oliver talk their way into (and in a few cases, back out of again) and Tommy and Laurel regale her with stories of their (mostly Oliver's) debaucherous youth.

"Okay, so you heard the one about the cop?" Tommy asks playfully as Laurel and Oliver just grimace.

"I think everyone's heard the one about the cop," Felicity laughs. "Everyone with the internet at least."

"Okay then," Tommy leans in with a mischievous look, "let me tell you about what happens when you leave your taxicab unattended around Oliver Queen…"

They stumble back to the Merlyn mansion after last call and fill the giant, empty house with the loud laughter of a few drinks too many. Felicity's just sober enough to pay close attention when Tommy brashly presses a kiss right to Laurel's lips, but the only one of them who seems anything but happy about it is Laurel, who flushes with just a hint of embarrassment as they say their goodnights.

Oliver's hand is hot in hers as they climb the stairs to their rooms, but just like last night, he stops in front of their respective doors and presses a slightly sloppy kiss to her cheek.

"Good night, Felicity."

She half-tempted to say "fuck it" to her decision not to sleep with him, but then she remembers how he was gone that morning, and she steels her resolve. This weekend has been magic, but if this is all she's going to get with him, she needs to save that one tiny scrap of her heart that isn't already on the fire. So she just nods, and only looks back at him once as she climbs the stairs.

"Good night, Oliver."

* * *

He waits in his room with the door open after she's disappeared up the stairs to #19, pretending to sort through his suitcase, hand still burning from where it's been clutching hers all night. He's at war with himself, internally. He wants to respect her, doesn't want to assume anything, doesn't want to spook her, but at the same time, he can't relax, can't even sit still with the need to touch her again. He needs know if she feels this too, because there's a fire in his chest that's been burning since she walked into that bar in Hollywood yesterday, and somehow it is both quenched and burns brighter the more time they spend together.

He paces his room, wondering if he's actually going to go insane, until he hears footsteps coming back down the stairs and he lets out a relieved breath he didn't even know he was holding. He's ready, standing in front of the door to the loft when it opens, but she's wearing his shirt again and all his carefully rehearsed words fail him.

"Are you…" she starts, sounding just as nervous as he feels. "I mean, I was just wondering if you were gonna…"

"Yeah," he breathes, answering the question she didn't really ask. "If you want me to."

"You don't have to. I mean…"

"Felicity."

"Yeah?"

"I've just been standing down here, waiting…"

* * *

For whatever reason, this is the moment she realizes it. That he feels this as strongly as she does. That his unexpected flowery words and big gestures and everything wonderful that's happened so far, that's actually him _holding back_. The awareness makes her heart soar and her stomach do a little flip and her brain realize that she is so incredibly screwed and also that she doesn't care one little bit.

She's still up one step, so she's got the perfect leverage to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him deep, which is exactly what she does. He bands his ridiculous arms around her back for just a few seconds before hoisting her up with one hand on her ass, using his other to guide them up the stairs as she wraps her legs around his waist.

He sits down on the bed with her on his lap, big hands shooting to still her hips when she grinds down on him, forgetting for a second the promise she made to herself. When he says her name on a strained groan, it snaps her back to reality.

"You left this morning," she says with as little accusation as possible, needing to clarify this much before they go any further.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she tells him softly, but honestly. "But I think I need to know why."

"I just...I woke up with you in my arms, and I felt…" He trails off and she takes a deep shuddering breath and whispers his name, placing her hands on his cheeks and tilting his face up to meet her eyes.

"I couldn't…" he continues, and her vision actually starts to swim a little at the way his voice cracks. "I thought if I had to do it again, if I had to wake up with you again, I'd never want to let you go."

She lets her breath out and tucks his head against her chest as the weight of his words hit her like a freight train.

"But you'll stay tonight...again?" She asks, pulling back on his lap a little and forcing herself to meet his eyes so he'll understand the question she's really asking.

"Yeah," he nods, gulping down a breath. "I mean, I'd like to. If you'll have me."

"Yeah," she gasps. "Yes. That's what I want."

* * *

There's no hesitation this time when they crawl into bed. She scoots right up against him and he loops his arm around her like they've been doing it for years. He's so relaxed and at peace, he's not even surprised when he starts confessing again.

"I die in the finale. Take a sword right through the gut."

He hears her take a sharp breath in, and she's quiet for a few moments that feel longer than they probably are before she speaks.

"A sword," she breathes, and he should have figured that she'd be piecing it together. "_He_ stabs you?"

"We duel to the death, he wins," he nearly growls. "For now."

"And he stabs you through the gut?

"Yeah.." He lets a breath out, tilting his eyes down up to hers cautiously. "Probably should have couched that with a spoiler alert huh?"

"No, why…it's fine," she says, but he can see the wheels still turning in her head. "Why'd you tell me?"

He takes a breath deep enough that he can see her head rise against his chest, because this is it.

"Before I die, my character, he thinks about all the most important things in his life, sees them in these little flashbacks. I spent three full days in that headspace and it just...it kind of wrecked me."

"Oliver…" She reaches up to card her fingers through his hair, pressing a kiss to his bare chest, right on one of his scars, and it sends a shiver through his whole body.

But he keeps going, the truth pouring out of him in a rush, because even though he's aware that he's told her more of himself in the last 48 hours than maybe even Tommy knows, he needs her to know this too, needs to tell her this while she's warm in his arms, and if all goes well, he needs to kiss her afterwards.

"I know Tommy told you about Sara, and that's definitely part of it," he says, taking a deep breath. "Laurel said yesterday that I've been torturing myself, and she's right. I thought that's what I deserved."

She doesn't say anything, just watches him with a look of sadness that he's relieved to see is devoid of anything like pity, and waits patiently for him to continue.

"But it's more than that. When you have these flashes at the end, the things that are important, you know, it can't be your job, it can't be your stuff, that's too hard to narrow down. What are you going to see, one day of your job, one project? One day you drove your fancy car, one time you swam in your giant backyard pool?"

He trails off and swallows hard, feeling like his heart is lodged in his throat.

"It's a person," she says, like she can read his mind, flattening her palm over the scars on his chest, over his heart. "It has to be a person."

"Yeah," he croaks out, looking down at her blue eyes. "It has to be a person. Somebody that you love."

She looks at him for a long while then and he can see it in her eyes, all the things she's too scared to say. So he lets their lips talk for them, pulling her up to kiss her deep for minutes that might be hours.

Just like last night, she snuggles up against him and presses her lips to his chest, and just like last night, he's terrifyingly sure that she's the last person he ever wants to see before he falls asleep.

* * *

She wakes before he does, her fingers still threaded through his on his chest and she realizes she's not actually worried at all about bed head or morning breath. She's not worried about anything, really, until she rolls over and sees the light on her phone blinking frantically.

"_CALL ME!"_ The text from Iris is all caps, and followed by three more that read the same.

"Iris, what now?" she mumbles groggily to herself, sliding from the bed and making her way over toward the window before she hits the call button.

"Oh my god, Felicity!" Iris is yelling even louder today, voice tinged with panic. "Why didn't you call me back?"

"Iris you called me at five in the morning," she groans. "Is the house on fire? Because the house had better be on fire."

"You have to get online," Iris tells her frantically. "They're all over Splash, Barry said Ray already sent them wide to everyone in the office."

"Iris, what are you talking about?"

"From the baseball game," her roommate says, and Felicity's stomach plummets. "Pictures of you and Oliver."

* * *

_A/N: HO BOY! Okay so, sorry no smut, that might be coming in future chapter (pun intended) but it didn't feel right for this one. Hope that's okay. Let me know what you think! And come say hey on Tumblr (theshipsfirstmate)!_


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: Welp. There's no excuse for this. I'm officially one of those people with eons between updates. This is dedicated to all of you who are still sticking with it. Welcome back. And to the newbies, thanks for reading! Get ready for a wild ride followed by like, four months of radio silence. Just kidding (I hope)._

**I'm a Slave to the Wires Ch. 5**

Oliver's never been much of a morning person. He's awake the second Felicity is out of his arms, but it takes him a few minutes to come to, and he can barely piece together her side of the frantic phone conversation.

_"Seriously Iris, is the house on fire? Because the house had better be on fire."_

Damn, she's adorable.

_"Wait, what are you talking about?"_

Damn. She's worried.

_"What…from the game?"_

She's more than worried.

_"But it's not…"_

Oh shit.

_"Oh god, oh shit, oh no…"_

She hangs up and turns back to him with wide eyes.

"There were pictures…of us, at the game yesterday," she stammers, looking away to scroll through her phone.

"Yeah," he shrugs as he sits up on his elbow, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, trying to be casual. "Instagram or something, right? I saw a few people on their phones, but what can you do about that?"

"Not Instagram, Oliver, fucking paparazzi!" Her eyes are darting between his and the screen, wild with fear, but it comes out like anger. "They got pictures of us…kissing!"

He'd laugh if she didn't look so stricken. "So what?"

This is the wrong question to ask.

"So what?!" She whirls back to face him in a fury. "So, the people I work with routinely comb paparazzi sites because, oh I don't know, it's part of their fucking jobs?"

"Somebody saw it." He likes to think he'd have been quicker on the draw if it wasn't so damn early.

"Everybody saw it!" She slumps then, righteous indignation deflating out of her like a leaky balloon. "Even if they hadn't seen it on the site, Ray sent them out wide to the whole office."

Oliver take a moment to think if he knows Ray Palmer's face from memory, trying to picture how satisfying it might be to punch it a few times. He's so preoccupied with the thought that his answering "It's gonna be fine," comes out placating and artificial. He can tell by her reaction that it's strike two.

She inhales and exhales once, slowly, deliberately. Then she starts down the stairs.

"Felicity…"

"I just need some air," she calls over her shoulder.

For the rest of his life, he'll regret the minute-and-a-half it took him to realize she had taken her bag with her.

He thunders downstairs, and finds only Tommy reading a paper and sipping coffee in the breakfast nook. He pretends not to hear the sound of a car pulling away outside.

"Did she…"

"Right past me, sorry buddy," his friends shrugs, genuinely contrite. "Where's she running off to?"

Oliver half-ignores him, yanking the front door open, but it's too late. She's gone.

"Dammit!" He spins back towards the kitchen, sputtering. "How did the goddamn car get here so fast?"

"I don't know man, there's like a million Ubers in this city," his friend answers unnecessarily, as Oliver stumbles into the nook. "They're everywhere."

"Goddamn it," he curses, fumbling with his phone. "I don't even have the fucking app!"

"Take my car, luddite," Tommy interrupts, motioning towards the side door, the house's private garage. "It's already here for me and Laurel to uh, go to brunch. Do you know where you're going?"

"No idea," he paces the tile floor in front of the table, pretending not to notice how amused his friend looks at the moment. Wait. "One idea. Maybe."

"Take. The. Car." Tommy insists. "Wherever she's going, Linda can beat her there, you know she can."

Oliver does know. The Merlyn's driver is a spitfire and he's made the mistake of doubting her in the past, usually resulting in some nasty whiplash. "But you guys…"

"…will call a cab. Or a summon an Uber or a Lyft or rent a Zipcar, or hell, maybe I'll buy a streetcar. Do you realize how many ways there are to get around in this city?" his friend teases. "Go get your girl."

* * *

Felicity ignores the driver's pointed look when she gives him the address.

"Yeah, yeah," she mutters mostly to herself, huddling down in the backseat. "Less judging, more driving."

She's breathing hard and using everything she's got to keep from crying in an Uber, idly wondering how it might affect her rider rating. She's not sure this guy, "Andre" according to the app, seems the type to give out pity stars. Plus, she's already mouthed off to him.

Every confidence she had last night has burned away in the harsh light of day, every comfort of the hours spent in Oliver's arms turned to razors in the embarrassing aftermath. It's her fault really, for finally giving and checking her work email after hanging up with Iris. She was surprised to find it was still activated, until she realized why.

_5:06 a.m._ An email from Ray directly to her. No subject. She didn't open this one.

_5:15 a.m._ An email to the entire editorial distribution list. Subject Line: "Oliver Queen's New Girl?" This one, she had opened.

_We should get an angle on this, _her boss had written, like it was any other pitch, like it wasn't her in the grainy shots from the baseball field. _How long before he cheats on this one?_

They won't run anything, Felicity knows this with certainty. Other outlets could catch on, make them look foolish, and what's more, Oliver honestly isn't enough of a name, not connected to her, anyway. The two of them aren't big enough to warrant extensive coverage or the purchase of exclusive paparazzi shots. No one would be interested in "Olicity." She knows this. She also knows that certainty shouldn't bother her like it does.

Because Ray sent the email just to taunt her. He had covered it under the guise of a weak pitch, so Felicity would know for certain that, at the very least, everybody she worked with had seen. As the fog of her initial panic starts to dissipate, it's clear that there's only one way this ends.

She has to get away from Oliver, and she has to get back to L.A., to try and salvage what's left of her professional life. But first, she has to do something she's always promised herself she'd do if she ever visited San Francisco.

She's barely thanked Andre and stepped out of his Prius onto the steep sidewalk when a giant black Suburban screeches to a stop across the street. She's more surprised than she probably should be when Oliver jumps out of the backseat and darts across the street, but she does manage a look of genuine shock at his disheveled appearance.

"Felicity!"

He fairly skids to a stop in front of her, as close as he can get without touching her.

"Oliver, how did you…" Maybe it's her tone that pulls him up short. Maybe it's the fact that she's high-tailed it from him no fewer than three times in less than 48 hours.

She tries to ignore the way that he's looking at her like she's a math problem, ignores the rom-com scene that plays in her head when she pieces together that he's actually chased her here. She definitely doesn't notice how he's still in his sweatpants and what sure looks like slippers. It doesn't register how his t-shirt is on inside out or how his hair is still a little stuck up in the back. And she absolutely does not want to kiss him.

"Tommy's driver used to drive security for foreign embassies in D.C." He answers the question she's not sure she was actually asking. "She knows her way around Sunday brunch traffic."

That's when she realizes that other people are starting to gather on the street, and they've all got their phones out to take pictures. Of course they do, that's why they're here in the first place. Suddenly, cursedly, everything that was endearing about his rumpled state sends her into a panic. This is the absolute last thing she needs right now.

"You know when people say they 'just need some air,'" she grits out through clenched teeth as she pulls him across the street, shoving him into the back seat of the SUV he just jumped out of and crawling in after him because the only thing on her mind at the moment is tinted windows, "you know it doesn't really mean that, right?"

She's ready to explain exactly what it does mean, but chokes on the words when she takes in the scene that's set inside the SUV. There's a few giant bouquets of fresh flowers and a giant, pricey bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket between the middle row bucket seats.

"This is _all_ Tommy," he cuts off her train of thought with an emphatic wave of his arms. "He had some plans for Laurel this morning, I guess, and I kind of…borrowed his car to chase you down. Say hi to Linda."

He motions to the driver, who's half-rolled down the partition and is waiting calmly, seemingly unphased by the crazy woman who just shoved Oliver Queen across the street. It's probably not a first, she is the Merlyn family driver, after all.

"Hi Linda."

"Nice to meet you Ms. Smoak," the woman nods, tersely, before she starts raising the partition. "Mr. Queen, I'm up here if you need me."

"Oh, this is a really bad idea," Felicity protests, mostly to herself, as they're sealed into privacy and the car pulls away from the crowd that's started to gather on the street.

"Nope, great idea," he smirks. "The Full House _house_ isn't anything to see in itself, anyway. You saw it, you're done. Where you want to go, is Alamo Square Park."

Oliver taps on the partition as she goldfishes beside him, mouth popping open and closed without really making a sound.

"Hey Linda, back us into a spot with a view of the Ladies, yeah?"

"Sure thing, Mr. Queen."

"How did you…?" Felicity stammers, and he just shrugs.

"You tweeted about it when we were at the game yesterday," he says, like that doesn't open up like several more lines of questioning. "And then you tweeted that your first screen name was DJTanner88."

"You follow me on Twitter?"

"I do now," he admits. "I mean, I hardly use the thing, but you link to it in your byline."

"My byline," Felicity repeats dumbly. "So you've read…?"

"I mean, I read some of the ones that sounded interesting."

"Ugh, don't give me a number," she groans. "I can turn out and publish 500 words on a Kylie Jenner Instagram in 20 minutes, doesn't mean I'm proud of it."

"You should be."

His smile's too bright and when he leans in, she knows that one touch of his lips could topple her resolve. It's a little too much. She pulls back so fast that she knocks her elbow on the door frame painfully, and uses the wince to change topics. "Wow, Tommy really went all out, huh? Three bouquets…is maybe a little excessive, but…"

She trails off and is totally screwed when he leaves her hanging, continuing to stare at her silently with eyes full of something she can't identify, or maybe doesn't want to. As always, her mouth fills the silence with something dangerous from her subconscious.

"He really…loves her, doesn't he?"

"Yeah, he really does." Oliver finally speaks, grinning at her and looking genuinely pleased for one long moment. Then his eyes go a little crinkly and he's looking at her like she's something to be solved again.

* * *

When the car pulls to a stop in a street-side parking space, he hops out almost immediately. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't follow, and he can barely hear her muffled sound of surprise as he rounds the SUV to open the back hatch.

"Oliver, what…"

He raises an expectant eyebrow when she turns fully in her seat to see him over the folded-down third row of seats. "C'mon, Felicity."

"I am not going anywhere with you dressed like that," she mumbles, almost like it's to herself. "Embarrassing pictures are what got us into this mess in the first place."

"I'm not asking you to go anywhere," he says, and it's like only then does she notice the stack of pillows and blankets he's arranging in the trunk. Her eyes go wide, even more so when they look past him to the familiar scene in the distance. "Just come back here and sit for a second. Please, DJTanner88?"

She climbs out, but not before rolling her eyes at him and he can't keep the grin off his face when she appears in front of him, eyebrows still knotted in suspicion. She takes his offered hand, climbing in beside him, and it's all he can do not to tuck her into his side and try to keep her there.

"So…the Ladies?"

"The Painted Ladies." He reaches over the back seat and snatches the bottle of champagne from the chilled bucket, then holds it outside the trunk to pop it off. After a healthy swig, he uses the bottleneck to point. "The row of houses that go down Steiner Street. It's _the_ shot."

When he offers her the bottle, she turns up her nose at him, and even that's adorable. "It's like, ten in the morning."

He reaches back and grabs one of the bottles of orange juice that had also been chilling in the bucket, twisting open the plastic cap and holding it out to her.

"Here, have a sip of this," he tells her, taking the opportunity for another healthy swing from the champagne bottle. "Now, it's mimosas."

"You're right, this is a better spot," she concedes, taking the bottle from him and turning to take in the view of the park and the iconic line of houses beyond it. "I always wanted to have a picnic here, like they did in the opening credits."

He raises his eyebrows and waits until she turns to face him before he tugs at the blankets beneath them and raises the champagne in salute with a knowing grin. Her eyes snap wide almost immediately and she lets out a little laugh. He can tell she wants it to sound a little sarcastic. She's not very successful.

"I did not tweet _that_," she trails off, looking away from him and taking a healthy pull from the champagne bottle.

"No, that was just luck. Or, Tommy." His jaw aches from smiling so hard, but he can't seem to come up with anything else when she's around, even if she's still so skittish. "So, you're a big Full House fan?"

She nods, distant, still not really looking at him. "I was. They were such a rag-tag group of dummies but they just loved each other, and things always worked out. Plus, I liked the idea of a big family, you know, uncles and siblings and friends everywhere."

There's a wistfulness in her voice that fills in the blanks for him, enough for now anyway.

"I always wanted to be Uncle Jesse," he offers and her smile is grateful when she turns to look at him, resting her chin on her shoulder.

"I like that television does that for people," she admits, muffling her words into her cardigan where's it's bunched up at her shoulder. "That it gives you heroes, makes you root for people, makes you love things. I love that people watch TV to decompress."

He doesn't quite understand the feeling – for so many years, television viewing for him has been essentially a montage of parts he thought he had deserved, and now, it falls into two categories: things that are his show and things that are not – but the wonder on her face makes him believe anything she says. He'll listen to anything she has to tell him.

"Of course, David Foster Wallace called it an 'anesthetic against loneliness'."

"Full House?" It's a lame joke, but she giggles and it's entirely worth it.

"No." She actually snorts a little. It's adorable. "Television."

"Yeah, but David Foster Wallace was a sad man," Oliver retorts, and he raises his hands defensively when her head snaps around to gape at him in surprise. "Hey, I don't him well, I admit. But I did carry around a copy of Infinite Jest for a month or two to impress a girl freshman year."

"I'll bet that _was_ impressive," she trails off, voice going a little dreamy, and he relishes getting to see her guard drop, even just this tiny bit. It's another one of those quiet moments they keep having, where it's like they're saying everything important in the silence.

It takes him a moment to realizes she's using the opportunity to consider him just as carefully. "Are you a sad man, Oliver Queen?"

He chooses his answer carefully, because he could give her a dissertation on the happiness she's brought him in just the two days he's known her. He could give her pages and verses, poetry about how she's brought the sun up, songs about how things are light for the first time in years. But he's on such thin ice already, and he's worried that the weight of too many words might sink him for good. "I used to be."

She smiles bright. It hits him like a camera flash, but it fades just as quickly, and she ducks her head. Her cheeks are a little pink and he wonders if the champagne's to blame.

It's definitely the champagne's fault when he leans in, intent on tilting her chin up and brushing his lips against hers. He moves in slow, giving her time to pull away, and she does.

"Oliver…" She turns, and his nose and lips just glance off her cheek. He tries not to let the fingers on her chin tense, tries not to feel the warmth of her blush against his own skin. "I have to go back to L.A."

"I know," he nods, because he won't lie to her, won't tell her she's wrong just to be selfish. "I understand that, I do. I just don't know why you can't stay a little longer."

"Because I can't."

"Why?"

"Because the longer I stay here with you, the greater my legacy as the girl that ditched her job to run away with the TV star grows." She says it bitterly, mechanically, and he's so close to sure that she doesn't even believe it herself. "I have relationships with studios, publicists, all of that goes out of whack the second my name comes up here."

"Not to mention I'm technically job hunting right now," she continues before he can get a word out. He forces down an ugly, gleeful feeling that claws through him when he realizes just how hard she's thought about this. "It's not good to be 'that girl' and be looking for a job in this town. That girl doesn't write the punchlines, that girl is the punchline."

"So what?" he asks. "So you just, shake it off and go back?"

"As soon as possible." She nods, but she still won't meet his eyes.

He knows his luck will run out sooner or later. But he can't even imagine not trying, even now.

"Okay…" he tells her, like he's agreeing, hopping out of the trunk and offering her a hand. He waits until they're settling back into their seats before he plays his next card. "Okay, we'll go back to L.A., just not the way we came."

* * *

"Huh?"

"We've done something that you wanted to do, we did the Full House tour," he says as they buckle in, matter-of-fact, like this was a planned morning of sightseeing instead of a ridiculous rom-com ripoff. "Now we have to do something that I want to do."

He presses a button and the partition slides down a few inches, as he enters something into his phone. "Hey Linda, I'm sending coordinates to the GPS."

"Got 'em, Mr. Queen."

"Oliver, you're not listening to me," Felicity blows out an annoyed breath that flutters her lips. He's not subtle about the way his gaze drops to watch, and that action alone sends an unwelcome rush to her gut. "I'm telling you I have to go."

"No,_ you're _not listening…" he smiles mischievously, before turning back to the front of the car, where the partition is still half-lowered. "Actually, Linda? I think we're going to have to stop at a store or something first. I can't exactly go in my PJs."

"Mr. Merlyn did have a suit pressed," the driver offers, holding up a garment bag.

He casts the driver a wary glace, before turning back to look at Felicity, like he's sizing _her_ up. Then he grabs the bag. "Yeah, whatever, that'll do."

"Oliver." Her meek protest feels even more ridiculous as he crawls over her to the back row of seats to change. The partition slides up, and once again they're alone.

"Felicity." He fires her name back mockingly and she turns to glare at him…just as he's sliding his sweatpants down his hips.

"I'm serious, Oliver." She whips her gaze back to safety, but her cheeks are already on fire. _Again_. "I have to go back."

"I know, I know," he sighs, like his exasperation with the excuse somehow makes it less true. "We're going back, okay? We're going back to Los Angeles."

She doesn't answer, just narrows her eyebrows, and it's like he can sense it, even though he can't really see her face.

"That's my thing, that's the thing I want to do," he explains, sort of, voice strained as he maneuvers the acrobatics of a backseat quick change. "We're just…doing things a different way."

When the clothes have stopped rustling enough that she feels comfortable turning back to glare at him again, he's wearing a satisfied smile along with, thankfully, a full wardrobe.

"There aren't act breaks here, dummy," she scoffs at him. "You have to have to explain yourself."

He laughs at her then, full-bodied, and she struggles to keep her lips pursed in displeasure. It's hard to feel anything other than totally content when he's around, even when she knows they're chasing metaphorical daylight.

"You can't just be surprised?" For the face he's making now, for those eyes and that hopeful smile, she almost could.

"Nope."

"Okay, fine." He heaves an exaggerated sigh as he pulls himself back up to sit opposite her. "There's this train car, that runs up the coast from L.A. to Seattle…"

"The Coast Starlight," she interrupts reflexively, and his eyes actually light up, like somebody flipped a switch.

"Yes!" He looks downright amazed,

"It was on an episode of Big Bang," she shrugs, because it's really nothing, and also because it's hard to focus on anything but how inappropriately small Tommy's shirt looks on Oliver's broad chest. The buttons are pulled tight, and she notices that he's left the top three open, seemingly out of necessity. It makes her mouth go dry as he pulls himself back up to the bucket seat opposite her. "You…you look like you belong in a novela."

He just smiles at her. She thinks it should look cockier. "You watch a lot of TV."

"It's literally what they pay me for." The retort rolls off her tongue so quickly she almost forgets. "Or…what they _used_ to pay me for and hopefully will again in the very near future. I mean, you should see me watch Jeopardy!"

She's babbling again, but all he does is keep smiling and lean closer. "I'd like that." His grin nearly blinds her as he closes the gap between their seats, and her heart takes a little stutter step. "Take the train with me, Felicity."

_Come away with me, Felicity. Take a shot, Felicity. Tell me what you want, Felicity._

He's asking all these things of her, posing all these requests without question marks like he already knows the answers. It's kind of infuriating.

But she's always wanted to take the train down the coast.

* * *

Oliver can't help but feel victorious when they board the beautiful rail car and it takes all his willpower to wait until they make their way to their private cabin before he backs her up against a wall and kisses her like he's wanted to for hours that have felt like days.

A tiny gasp is the only indication that he's surprised her at all, and her arms wind up around his neck as she returns the kiss with the same frantic need he feels jackhammering in his own chest. He hasn't had her in his arms since they woke up this morning and he's already at the point where that's far too long.

"Felicity." Her name scrapes from his throat as he rasps his stubble across her cheek, trailing his lips across to kiss the spot right below her ear. The action elicits a sound from her that starts out like a moan but ends up being his name and it's singularly the greatest thing he's ever heard.

He's crawling out of his skin. Tommy's pants might fit better than his shirt, but they're still not the right size, a fact that's becoming rapidly more evident and uncomfortable the longer he's pressed up against her.

"Not on a train," she gasps out of the blue, pulling back in his arms and pressing some distance in between their top halves, even as she keeps one leg wound around his. "Our first time can't be a Dr. Seuss rhyme."

He wants to point out that she's the one who laid down the law in the first place, but his mind fritzes to static when he realizes she said _first_ time. "Okay," he whispers, willing to concede to anything she asks, so distracted by the feel of her in his arms.

Because that doesn't mean he can't kiss her. In fact, he'd be crazy not to be kissing her as much as possible. She tastes like champagne and something even more intoxicating; something familiar, though he's dying to know more.

He sits on the fold-out bench seat, pulling her to settle in his lap and they lose a few minutes that might be hours in the soft slide of lips and hands. He wants her, he does, but it's like even his body knows to take any of her that he's lucky enough to get, and right now it's enough just to hold her however she'll let him.

It should feel dangerous, how he's ready to give her whatever she wants, but he's never felt more safe.

"So what's your show about?" He asks her later when they're settled a little, contently wrapped up in each other, watching the sun set over the Pacific as the train races down the coastline.

"My show?"

"Yeah, the show you want to write, what's it about?"

She stares at him blankly, like he's speaking a foreign language.

"Come on, you gave me like, a ten-minute monologue on the virtues of TV," he teases, just a little. "It's pretty obvious you don't just want to write recaps."

To his surprise, once she recovers from what he feels is slightly-exaggerated shock, she does tell him. Tells him all about the pilot she's writing, about the show that's "set in the future, but it's not really sci-fi" and "like, Firefly meets Veronica Mars."

"Wow." He does his best to sound suitably impressed, and not at all like a guy who hasn't seen much of either of those shows.

"I know, I know, they collectively pulled like, three seasons works of below-average ratings," she continues. "The elevator pitch needs work. But the pilot's almost done."

"I'd love to read it." She might be too brainy for him, but he's smart enough to tell the truth.

"Mmm, I'll get you a cameo," she murmurs, nuzzling her face into his chest. The mix of early morning adrenaline and late-morning "mimosas" are catching up to them, and he can feel his eyelids going heavy at the steady rhythm of the rails and her heartbeat pressed to his side. But she snuggles in under his arms and he's so desperate for it not to be the last time that he's practically vibrating.

"I'm tired."

The words and ensuing yawn are muffled in his shirt and he can feel her breath warm his chest, even through the material. He takes a moment to idly hope that she's wearing lipstick, answering her before his brain has a chance to think on it too hard.

"So stop running."

He waits until she's snoring lightly to whisper the other words, the ones that would scare her away for certain.

* * *

Felicity wakes up before him, but stays nestled in his arms, unwilling to move, overcome with something that feels a lot like desperation. When the name of the approaching station sounds over the PA, she consults the map on her phone, and the feeling takes a turn for the worse.

"Oliver."

His arms tighten instinctively around her as he wakes, and she tries desperately not to let that, or the tiny sounds he makes as he stumbles adorably into consciousness, affect her. She needs to remain composed and practical. This is a good idea. "_Oliver_."

"Hmm?"

"You should get off at the Van Nuys station." She turns to him, aiming for cool, collected, and enthusiastic, all at once. "Your car's at the airport, remember? You could get a cheap Uber and pick it up."

"What? No, I… that's Tommy's car." He blinks his eyes at her a few times, shaking his head like there's more than just sleep confusing him. "What about you?"

"I'll be fine," she says, matter-of-fact. This is the easiest way to do this, she keeps telling herself, and it will work if she can fully commit. "I'll keep going to Union Station and get the red line, there's a stop a few blocks from my house."

"No, Felicity…" He shakes his head, still not fully computing. "Let me take you home."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

His eyes darken as her throat tightens on the last words. It's a standoff, and when the train stops at the Van Nuys station, he holds his ground.

"Oliver…"

"So this day," he cuts her off, but he has to stop and clear his throat. It's a terrible sound. "I mean, I know it's complicated, I get that. But this whole day, after everything…you've still been thinking…this is it?"

He spits the words out, like they taste as bitter as they sound. If she had one wish right now, it would be to forget the look on his face. The stand in a stalemate, until the train jerks to a start again, headed for Union Station, for downtown Los Angeles and the next leg of their journey.

_Damn it._

* * *

_Damn it._

He slept too long – again – and she's made some kind of decision about this in the meantime. She's running for what the fourth or fifth time now? She didn't hear his whispered pleas, or worse, she did, and talked herself out of it once more. He's going to have to start setting alarms if this is ever going to work. He'll wake up before her for the rest of their lives if it keeps her believing in this.

"Okay, but Felicity," he tries to keep his voice from shaking, because he doesn't want this to sound like a surrender, "if this is all I get, I'm at least going to walk you home."

She acquiesces, smiling sadly, and somehow that's worse. They go silent then, transferring to the red Metro line at Union Station and riding north into Hollywood. He stays close, but keeps himself from reaching for her until she gets off at her stop and outpaces him, moving one step up on the massive escalator that brings them up to street level. He can't help it then, the imagery socks him in the gut, and he grabs for her hand, breathing a sigh of relief when she laces her fingers through his.

Oliver walks her home then, down a stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard that nobody writes songs about. They pass liquor stores and smoke shops, and a few assorted patrons of each that line the sidewalks out front. When they walk past the door of a small corner bakery, instead of cinnamon and yeast, all Oliver smells is cigar smoke, and when he glances inside, instead of a flour-freckled baker, there's just a group of four balding men glaring at him from their seats around a folding card table.

Two police helicopters sweep low and loud above their heads, shining their spotlights down to street-level, and he wonders, not for the first time, how she sleeps.

"Whoa, don't get your personas mixed up here, buddy." Her tone sounds teasing when his hand tightens on hers at the sound of some slurred nonsense bellowed down the street, but when he looks at her, her eyes are serious and sad. "Nobody needs rescuing."

"That's not what I…" He cuts himself off, because the last thing he wants to do is fight, and takes a moment to find better words.

"I'm not trying to save you, Felicity." He tells himself that the dread in his stomach isn't because he's lying. That would be a little grandiose, even by his standards. "I just want to take you home."

* * *

As they reach her house and round off the sidewalk to the front steps, she tells herself it's time to let go, even as some more honest part of her longs to hold onto every part of him she can. She's not proud of it, but she knows that if he tries to kiss her, she's going to let him.

"Well, you did it. Now, how are you gonna get home?" She sighs, looking everywhere but his face. She's aiming for upbeat curiosity, but it ends up sounding like a plea. _Stay_.

"I'll call a car, I guess," he shrugs, refusing to look anywhere but her face.

She realizes then that she doesn't even know where home is for him, not really. "You shouldn't have…."

"_Felicity_."

The way he says her name should be criminal, or at the very least, heavily regulated. Because it makes her do things like scale back the walls of resolve she's literally just built up. She doesn't realize his lips are dangerously close until it's too late.

"This could work, you know." When he pulls back from the soft, almost-chaste kiss, it's like he sees right through her, he sounds so sure. "It works for people every day."

"Oliver, it's not the odds I'm worried about." She hates the way her lips tingle after even the slightest contact with his, hates the way she knows from this weekend that's it's not just because of the emotional charge of this moment. "I mean, I'm just not sure I can be what you need right now."

"What I _need_…" He actually steps back from her to scoff at this, scrubbing a hand through his short-cropped hair. She feels the loss of his body against hers acutely, and she can't figure out why he looks almost angry. "Felicity…"

He takes a deep breath, like he's laying all his cards on the table. "I know Tommy told you what happened with Sara. I know he thinks the reason I haven't been…with anyone is because I'm afraid of hurting someone. Or getting hurt. I guess that's partly true, but I…"

"Oliver, no!" She interrupts him once it becomes clear how perfectly she's screwed this up already. "I didn't mean…You're not…It doesn't have anything to do with you. You're…_remarkable_."

"Felicity," he exhales her name and it makes heart stutter, but she doesn't let him continue.

"You deserve someone equally remarkable and I just, I have to be a lot of things for myself right now, and this _thing_ with you…" She's talking with her hands, very aware of how they're not touching him. "I think I could get lost in it, and the worst part is, I'm not even sure that would be such a bad thing…but it's not what I've been working for. "

When she finally stops for a breath, he gets a word in edgewise "I know that, Felicity, I do." He shakes his head, like he's trying to take it all back, and she realizes that, despite everything, that would be the most heartbreaking thing that's happened today. "But there's something that you need to know, too."

She tries to cut him off, to head these emotions off before anything can even pass, but then he grabs her hands again, tracing warm circles with his thumbs on the center of her palm and she loses all power of speech. "You _are_ remarkable. And as far as what I need…Felicity, I think…"

"Don't." She finds her voice then, just in time to cut him off, snapping her watery eyes to meet his. "Don't say anything you don't mean."

"Don't tell me what I mean," he fires back, gaze sparking back at her.

"You're crazy, then," she retorts, telling herself that it doesn't mean anything when they're moving closer instead of further apart as they argue. "You've known me for like, three days. You can't possibly…" She can't even bring herself to say the words.

"Why the hell not?"

"You don't even know me!"

He huffs out an angry breath. Because it's her trump card, the truth.

"You don't know me at all," she says again, because it bears repeating. "And what's worse is I know, just, so much about you. I mean, I thought that would at least give me the upper hand here."

"Upper hand? Felicity this isn't a competition."

"Isn't it? Then why do I feel like I'm losing?" The words are out of her mouth before she realizes how they'll sound. His face falls, and she really is an asshole for making it do that again.

"Listen, I'll go," he says, holding his hands up in surrender. Like she's beaten him down, when, in fact, there might not be a better way to describe what just happened. "I'm gonna give you some space. But don't think that I'm walking away."

"Why not?" Isn't he _tired_ of this? "Wouldn't it just be easier?"

"Maybe." That's all he says out loud. He waits for her, waits until she meets his eyes to tell her the rest.

"Just please," she whispers, one last resort, "just don't say it."

"I said everything I needed to say last night, Felicity," he snaps, breaking contact, finally, stepping back and down a step. "I meant it when I told you I wouldn't want to let you go."

He pauses, and when he reiterates it feels like he's talking about something else, something more. "I _meant_ it."

She closes the door behind her and watches him walk down the street through the front window. Then it's too much for her to bear.

* * *

He gives it a week – a week to purge her from his system, a week to shake it off – and then it's too much for him to bear. Truth be told, he's not all that surprised to fail completely. They didn't even have sex, and still his body misses her _acutely_, his fingers and lips itch at the absence of hers to tangle with and he's having trouble sleeping, like she's spent decades tucked against him instead of just two crazy nights.

He's always been a passive man, passive and selfish and how well they went hand-in-hand. Easier to get kicked out of a school you didn't want to be in. Easier to cheat on your girlfriend than have an honest conversation about breaking up. Easy to let everything crumble to your level than to try and build anything.

The first time he ever really tried at something was when he moved out to Hollywood, but that was desperation of a different kind. Maybe it's just that he's never had something like this to fight for before.

"Do you love her?" Tommy's teasing, but Oliver's breath catches in his throat anyway and the mirth in his friend's eyes drops as her eyebrows narrow to pin him in.

"Tommy, I don't…" He glances around the restaurant like there might be some consequence, someone there to overhear them, someone who _knows_, other than Laurel, who's getting a drink at the bar.

"Wait, are you serious right now? You love her?" His friend looks amazed, but not totally shocked, somehow. He's had an easy grin on his face ever since he and Laurel made their way back from San Francisco, and his next words confirm Oliver's suspicions. "You know a week ago, I would have told you you were nuts."

It's so hard to feel anything but genuine joy for his friends and Oliver gives in, letting a grin split his worried face. "And now?"

"Yeah, I'm not so inclined to spit in the face of true love these days," Tommy admits, before sizing his friend up comically. "Look at us, growing up."

"Look at _you_," Oliver retorts. "I haven't done anything, I don't _have_ anything."

"Not yet, anyway" his friend says with a grin.

"Not yet, what?" Laurel asks as she slides in the booth next to him, eyes fixed on Tommy even as she slides Oliver his drink.

"Ollie's in love."

"Oh well, duh," Laurel answers, unamused until they both gape at her in disbelief. "I mean, it was pretty obvious last weekend. What, do neither of you have eyes?"

"I'm not…" Oliver sputters, futilely, reaching for the truer answer. "I _can't _be."

"What are you talking about?" The question might come from either of them, they're such a united front – have been for years now – and anyway, his mind's a million miles away.

He huffs a frustrated breath out his nostrils.

"I've never felt this way," he stumbles. "But I'm trying not to…I can't love her if she doesn't feel the same, if she's not going to… It's too much. It's too hard."

"So what are you gonna do?" This one comes from Tommy, the challenge clear in his tone, and reflected in his eyes when Oliver looks up at him. But Laurel's giving him a look too, one that he can't quite decipher.

"Huh?"

"I'm saying, Oliver," his friend leans in, "sword through your chest, what are you gonna do?"

* * *

Felicity's week passes in a blur of late mornings in bed, all-day Netflix, and all-night wine. She sends out a few resumes and registers online for unemployment, like she's simply on hiatus with the other writer's PAs and assistants. On hiatus from what, she doesn't know.

Iris finally coaxes it out of her one night when she gets home from work to find Felicity already opening her second bottle of pinot.

"Huh-uh, no." Her friend slaps her with the junk mail as she crosses to the kitchen to throw it out. "Get up, we're at least going to The Foundry so you're not drinking alone like a loser!"

John raises a pointed eyebrow when she trudges into the bar in the same ratty T-shirt and yoga pants she's been wearing all day, but thankfully, he doesn't ask any questions. She's not so lucky when it comes to Iris.

"Felicity, you've got to level with me here," her friend says once they're settled with glasses of red in front of them. "Because I want to help you, as a friend, but also, because this is something that I just need to know, as a woman. Did you sleep with Oliver Queen?"

"No!" she blurts out, sloshing her glass a little to take a fortifying sip. "That's the worst part! I mean, I popped his buttons and everything, and still, nada…"

"Wait," Felicity's vision is a little fuzzy, but it's easy to see her friend's eyes go wide. "You…popped buttons?"

"Yes…" she whines, sobbing the words out across several syllables. "We were on the train, his shirt was too tight, buttons popped…just like a terrible romantic comedy."

"And yet, no sex."

"No," Felicity fairly sobs, and it might be pathetic except for how sad it truly is, how she couldn't even get the "sordid weekend getaway" right.

"Why not?"

"I just….everything was so crazy, you know?" She slaps her palm down on the bartop with a little more force than she intends, and John tosses her a light-hearted warning look.

"Felicity, I _don't _know. You haven't really told me anything about what happened." Iris makes a point she wishes weren't so cogent.

"Trust me, it was crazy." She feels like she's starting to slur a little, which truthfully, means she might have been slurring for a while now. "And he said…all this stuff and it just…it feels like a dream, you know?"

"Again, sweetie, I really want to help here, but you're not giving me a lot of specifics."

"It was so…but it just wasn't real." She shakes her head, hoping to Etch-a-Sketch the whole week from her memory. "So I figured, if I didn't sleep with him – if I didn't make the simplest part of it, the part that makes the most sense, really – if I didn't make _that_ real, then none of the other stuff was real."

Iris sighs from somewhere beside her, and she snaps her eyes back open. "What other stuff?"

"Complications." Felicity motions emphatically with her hands. "Things he thought he was feeling, but he isn't…wasn't."

"How do you know he's not?" It might be telling that her friend keeps things in the present tense, but she's on the wrong side of tipsy to piece that together.

"Because he's Oliver Queen," she says, like that explains it all. Doesn't it? "And I'm Felicity Smoak."

"Do you, Felicity Smoak, feel these feelings too?"

"Oh, why don't you just can it, Lois Lane," she snaps at Iris' shit-eating grin. "All of this is off the record, by the way."

"Oh stop it, I'm not going to tell," her friend says, a statement that might be contradicted by the fact that she's dialing someone on speakerphone.

"Hey Iris!" Felicity makes a sloppy mental note to tell Barry that his too-cheerful tone is pretty transparent, even over the phone.

"Hey Bear, can you think of any reasons that Oliver Queen might be in love with Felicity?" John looks up from the bar in amused curiosity, and she shushes her friend dramatically.

"Uh, I mean, sure!" Barry sputters a little, but Felicity's gotta give him credit for how he recovers. He's really one of the good ones. "I mean, she's a genius, obviously, tech whiz, good kisser, those glasses…are a thing for some people…"

"Wait, a second, what now?"

It must be the wine, because Felicity could swear Iris looks a few shades of green at the mention of her ill-fated Christmas kiss with Barry. But she's saved by the bell, or whatever the drunk girl's name is that stumbles between them.

"Did I hear you guys say Oliver Queen?" the girl asks, too loudly, swinging her head back and forth, like she's trying to look at both of them at one. "Because my sorority sister totally slept with him, too. High five!"

Iris takes the raised hand and uses it to push the girl back, which thankfully has the added effect of diverting her entirely. It's either her words or the wine that has Felicity's stomach doing somersaults as her friend turns back to stare her down.

"So…you guys kissed?"

"Oh right, Barry," she nods hard, over-selling the truth, hoping they're done with the other part of this conversation. "Yes, that happened. Once upon a holiday shitshow."

Felicity remembers Iris calling their friend back then, and yelling at them both for not telling her sooner. Her last thought is that maybe Barry's not the only one who's getting transparent with his feelings.

Then, all of a sudden, it's noon the next day. She's in her bed, but also still in her jeans, and her head is pounding and heavy with the weight of several bad decisions. When she finds her phone tangled in her comforter, it's 2% away from dying, with one missed text message, and she groans at, just, everything.

_Still on for lunch and prep? My place at 2?_

* * *

When Oliver just can't take it anymore, can't wait any longer for her to reappear in his life, he goes to her. He knows knocking on Felicity's front door would be too much, but that doesn't mean he can't meet his sister for a late lunch at her favorite bar, right? He feigns ignorance and shames Thea for being uppity when she whines about going "this far east," hoping her affinity for anything hip and undiscovered keeps her from asking too many questions.

John just nods at him when he enters and takes a seat at the far end of the bar, the small part of the "L" with a view of the whole place, and he takes that as a good sign. He eyes Thea when she walks in not a minute later, and Oliver takes the first opportunity again, to stick out his hand and reassert himself.

"John, this is my sister, Thea," he says quickly as the bartender grasps him in another death grip, but his eyebrows go up at the news and Oliver'd bet a buck that his second nod, in his sister's direction, is an accepting one. Still, he's treading lightly.

"You got that IPA?"

"Got an even better one," the man grunts, already pouring. Thea turns to face Oliver with skeptical eyes.

"This guy knows you?"

"I know him enough," John says, setting the beer down in front of him.

He thinks it might be a good sign that the bartender is addressing him, hell, he thinks the fact that the man's let his head remain attached to the rest of his body bodes well for him at this point, but he still doesn't trust it. Maybe Felicity hasn't been here. Maybe she hasn't told him. He never really asked her about their relationship. There's so much he hasn't had the chance to learn about her. The reminder steels his resolve.

"Oh, dude!" A voice breaks him out of his reverie. Andy, he remembers, as the barback rounds the corner, addressing him emphatically. "Will you please call your girl? I know she's not going to say anything, but she was in here the other night, and…"

"Andy," John warning voice silences his brother momentarily as he knocks the brim of his backwards cap, but the younger barback throws a pointed look Oliver's way as his sister interrupts.

"This is _the_ girl we're talking?" Thea asks, turning immediately to Andy when Oliver gives her a noncommittal shrug. "You know this girl?"

"Yeah, Smoak's in here all the time," Andy nods. "She's the best."

"She'd better be," Thea says with a laugh that's too haughty for Oliver's taste. "I mean my brother apparently gave her the V.I.P. tour of San Francisco."

"Thea, enough." Oliver looks to John, for what he's not sure. Help, maybe, or at least solidarity. But the man's running a rag over the bar, feigning obliviousness so well Oliver thinks he could offer him a part as an extra. "Tommy needs to keep his mouth shut."

"Man, you didn't even tell your own sister?" Andy raises an eyebrow at him that he suppose he deserves. He's been keeping it to himself, save for the one, unavoidable conversation with Tommy and Laurel, afraid that to mention it out loud might jinx it.

"No he didn't, Andy," Thea agrees, gleeful to team up against her brother, as usual. "So why don't you tell me. This girl, Smoak, she's something special?"

"Oh, absolutely," Andy nods. "She's smart, pretty, kicks ass at fantasy baseball."

"Really the whole package," Thea teases him. "So, how come you're not dating her?"

"Oh man, no, it's not like that," Andy shakes his head and Oliver notices Digg's expression shift, almost imperceptibly, but definitely in the direction of pride. "Smoak's like my sister. And I don't date my little sister. Now, other people's little sisters on the other hand…"

He leans in a little closer to Thea, who just rolls her eyes and smiles. Oliver fights the urge to put the kid in his place, but it's a weak one because there are a million other things on his mind. Besides, Andy's game is harmless compared to the garbage he knows his sister gets dealt on a regular basis from the douchebags in Beverly Hills. He might even be good her, but Oliver's not certain that's a two-way street.

"Some kind of Serendipity thing, the two of them," Andy tells his sister then, leaning in even and pointing toward Oliver. She gives him a conspiratorial look before they both turn on him with knowing grins. "I think they're star-crossed."

Thea gasps, teasing, but Oliver thinks her wide eyes might be genuine. "Ollie, are you star-crossed? With Smoak?"

"_Felicity_," he snaps back before he can stop himself. "Her name is Felicity, and I just…I'm not star-crossed. I'm fine."

"_Fine_," his sister parrots. It's as annoying as it was when they were little. "Fine, like, sitting in a bar waiting for a girl, _Felicity_, who may or may not show up, fine?"

"Thea, it's not…I just want to…" He stammers, because she's just driven in the nail of one of his biggest fears. What the hell does he do if he simply never sees her again?

"Yeah, you're cool as a cucumber," his sister snorts, and over Andy's whoop, he almost misses the way John's mouth quirks up at the corner.

* * *

"Felicity!" Barry opens his front door with cheerfulness that sounds fake, though it might just be how his voice grates at her hangover. "How are you? How's Iris?"

"She's good Barry," Felicity deadpans, as always, pressing her way inside. "Ask her out, Barry."

"Ah, I'm getting so close," he says with a little cringe as he closes the door behind her. "Almost there."

She just groans, making herself at home in her friend's tiny home office while he babbles on. "Anyway, thanks for coming, Felicity, I really appreciate it. I just, you know, want to practice my questions and time out my panel, so I'm done in time for them to screen the teaser. It won't take long, I promise"

She can't figure it out, he sounds almost surprised and looks nervous as hell, even though this isn't his first time moderating at Comic-Con. And it's not like he's never seen her hungover before.

"Of course," she sighs, rubbing at her temples because they both know she agrees to help him ages ago. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

"What do you mean?" he plays it off until she gives him a no-nonsense glare. Then, his face drops completely, and so does her gut when she realizes. "Iris didn't tell you."

"Barry…" she starts slowly, willing him to cut her off at the pass and tell her she's got the whole thing wrong. "Barry, what panel did you get?"

She helps him anyway, of course she does. Because she's a good friend and she's good at what she does, and most of all, because she's going to have to get over this at some point. Relegating Oliver to another name tag on a Comic-Con panel seems as good a place as any to start. It's how they would have ended up eventually meeting, she realizes idly halfway through, then spends the better part of ten minutes daydreaming about how _that_ might have turned out.

She plays Oliver's part (and Laurel's, and all their other co-stars), dutifully making up terse, but realistic answers as Barry rushes through his questions. ("Seriously, dude, you have to breathe.") She tries to fight it, but anytime Barry asks "Oliver" a question, her heart beats a little faster and her head starts to buzz with the feeling of putting words in his mouth when just a few days ago she was kissing them away. He's making her nervous and he's not even here.

It also seems wrong, scripting answers for him. Because she feels like she might know him, might actually know him better than most of the people that will be in that room, and yet, she also knows that there's no predicting what he might do or say. He's a constant surprise, and her biggest revelation so far is how different he is from the jovial, open book he plays at events like this. She thinks about his layers, about how much he showed her, how sure she was – still is – that he rarely, if ever, opened up to people like that. And then she thinks about how she has to stop thinking of him in the present tense.

It makes her heart hurt, and it makes her anxious, the way the whole thing's starting to feel like a dream, like something that never really happened. But she makes it through the whole panel, three times over until Barry's comfortable, and honestly, the whole thing feels like an accomplishment.

"So, will I see you there?" Her friend smile's just a little sad when he walks her to the door and she stumbles on her answer, unexpectedly emotional.

"Barry, I don't know…"

"Not at the panel, obviously," her friend covers, blushing a little like he had every time he addressed panel-Oliver. "But you're not going to miss Comic-Con, are you? I mean, you've already got your pass, I assume you still have a hotel room."

He's right, she realizes. She hasn't even thought of it since quitting, but truthfully, her thoughts have been otherwise occupied.

"Maybe," she hedges, grateful when he doesn't push.

"Okay, well if you go, we're doing room service and crappy movies in my room on Wednesday night. It's tradition."

She thinks back to the first Comic-Con they worked together as interns, remembers how they were too nervous to leave the shitty hotel on the first night and spent the whole time camped out in her room, studying their schedules and maps.

"Of course, Barry," Felicity smiles at him as she leaves, and the grin he gives her in return is enough to make her think to another lifetime, one where that kiss under the mistletoe made her feel like she had last weekend. One where they're perfect and this is easy.

And then he asks her to tell Iris he said "hi", and she's reminded of where they're both at, really.

* * *

Thea taps out after two heavy beers and pulls out her phone to call for an Uber. Her smile's a little crooked and Oliver has to take a moment do that big brother thing where he reminds himself that she's an adult and is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

"You're really going to sit here and wait?" she teases him, dropping her phone back into her purse with a careless thunk.

"Just a little longer," he nods, looking down at his glass, staring at the foam swirling around the end of his third beer. "You think this is crazy?"

"I think I'm sending you out for the next Nicholas Sparks movie, you big sap," his little sister smiles, kissing him on the cheek before turning to say goodbye to the brothers behind the bar.

"Very nice to meet you," Andy says with a little bow. John just rolls his eyes and gives her a wave and a smile.

"Okay, now I'm serious man," the barback says, turning back once Thea's out the door. "I help you out with Smoak, you give me your sister's number. Deal?"

"_Andy_." John's voice is sharp and low and his brother once again raises his arms in innocence. "Why don't you go grab that half-keg of Lilikoi and set it up like I asked you to twenty minutes ago?"

"I really don't need help, John," Oliver protests when the younger man is out of sight, trying to appear as innocuous as possible.

"You might," the man says with a little smile. "You've got that look on your face."

"Look, I don't…you obviously know her well," he fumbles, taken slightly aback by the man's acceptance of him, and whatever it is he's got on his face. "I don't want you to think I'm…"

"Listen man, I don't really read that tabloid garbage, okay?" This time, John takes mercy and cuts him off. "And I sure as hell don't believe what I read, you know?"

"I just want to talk to her, I swear," Oliver nods. It occurs to him that he was in the same exact position a little over a week ago, waiting for her right here in this bar. It's almost shocking how different he feels like, like he's somebody else entirely. "Just give me a few more minutes, I'll pay for drinks."

"You'll pay for what I tell you," the man answers, still smiling, setting another beer in front of him. "But that one's on the house. In case you need it."

* * *

She drives home from Barry's in a bit of a haze, thinking back to the madness of the last week. And maybe it's muscle memory or maybe it's memories of a different kind that have her pulling in the parking lot of the bar. Maybe it's the memory of Oliver's lips on hers that makes her suck in a breath at the sight of him seated on a barstool, maybe it's the memory of the too-serious look in his eyes that makes her storm up to him before he can even look up from his beer.

"Get out." He nearly tumbles off the stool in surprise, and that should be hilarious. But none of this is funny.

"Felicity!" When he looks up at her – like he can't believe she's really there – she realizes her memories don't really do justice to any of this. Because the way he looks, the sparkle in his eyes, the way he says her name, it's so much more than she remembered.

"No, _get out,_" she repeats. "You don't get to be here, this is my bar and my neighborhood, and…"

She's too worked up to realize that this outburst is causing the exact kind of attention she has expressly hoped to avoid. But he's distracting her, just smiling like he can't help himself, and he's come after her, again, and it's infuriating. "Get out!"

He turns to go, but he doesn't look at all defeated, and it's not until she turns see Digg behind the bar giving her a reproachful look that she snaps completely.

"Oh, absolutely not," she spits, louder than she intends, but with the exact amount of venom. "John Diggle, do not tell me you're on his side!"

"I'm on your side, Felicity, don't be stupid," her friend retorts in an obvious tone that's annoyingly placating. "But the guy's been here for four hours, you can't at least hear him out?"

She huffs out an angry breath through her nose, and Digg does his best not to say "I told you so" when she turns on her heel. She rounds the corner outside, and Oliver's waiting for her there, leaned up against the side of the building with a smile, like this is easy.

"They oughta put a plaque up for us in the this alleyway," he smirks, and she realizes he might be a little drunk.

"How are you everywhere?" She's aware that she sounds a little frantic, but there's not a whole lot she can do when the words are coming out faster than she can monitor them. "_Why_ are you _everywhere_? I just want to…I need to just, let it go, and you're everywhere. You're on my TV, on my fucking wall, you're at Comic-Con…"

"Comic-Con...wait, I'm still on your wall?" It might be liquid courage that lets him lean in a little closer with a cocky smile, but she's got her own head of steam.

"Oliver, you have to stop."

* * *

"Stop telling me what I have to do, Felicity." He's not exactly sure what she was on about, and not just because he's three beers deep. But when he leans closer, her gaze drops to his lips, like she can't help it, and he knows that single thread of fear is that only thing that's really holding her back.

He's got a million ideas at once, fighting their way out of him, desperate to be the one that wins her over. "Listen, I won't say it if you don't want to hear it, but you have to know that I want to be with you more than you want to run from this."

"You can't be sure of that." Her voice is shaky and uncertain. It's the second part that keeps him pushing forward, and he gives her his most confident Ollie Queen smile.

"Why don't you let me tell you what I'm sure of, for once." When the smile doesn't seem to work, he remembers back to a few nights ago, standing on her front porch and takes her hands in his, thumbs rubbing against her palms, almost reflexively. He watches her, waits until the tension drops from her shoulders and she looks back up at him with eyes that are both nervous and expectant, before he continues.

"What I'm sure of, is that the last few years of my life have been a blur," he tells her. This time, it's really all in. "I work, I train, I have like, three friends. Days blend into weeks, and weeks turn into seasons and before you know it, I'm going around again…"

"Oliver." Even the sound of his name on her lips doesn't slow him down, though this time it sounds less like a protest.

"And then the other day, I got this call, and I heard your voice, and I saw you walk into that bar, and jesus, every time you smile, it's like everything comes into focus." They both take gasping breaths, but hers is sharper, and he covers the end of the sound with his lips on hers.

She tastes like all he's ever wanted and still, it leaves him wanting everything.

"Felicity, the other night," he breathes against her lips when they part. "You only gave me two options, that wasn't fair."

"Huh?"

"You said that I was lying," he whispers, stealing another kiss when her breath catches in recognition, "or that I was crazy. What if there's a third option?"

"I don't think there is." She sounds sad, but not resigned, and he's nowhere close ready to give up. He pulls back, resting his forehead against hers lightly, looking her dead in the eye.

"I do," he nods, sincerely. "What's more, I'm gonna prove it. And as soon as you start living your life based on what you feel, versus what you think you're supposed to feel, you'll catch up."

Her eyes are wide and her lips are glistening when she looks up at him with an expression that he's ready to spend a lifetime trying to pin down. He stays just out of reach, though, waiting for her to lean in again, giving her one more chaste peck and pulling back with a cocky smile. This time, there's no part of him that's worried the kiss might be his last. "See you at Comic-Con, Felicity."

_A/N: Next stop, San Diego! Lemme know who's still on board, promise to try my best to wrap this thing up in a more timely fashion._


End file.
